need help configuring home video editing PC

[Juan]

Ok, please forgive the naiveness of my question. I'm not even sure if this
is the right forum. I am going to attempt to build my first video editing
PC. I have only ever built one other PC for my kid and it worked out just
fine. I used an MSI MB and AMD XP processor for it.

Anyway, here's what I want to do. I would like to build a relatively
inexpensive PC to capture DV from a camorder, edit it on a PC, and then
record to dvd. When i say inexpensive, I mean 600-700 bucks. not including a
monitor. I know in the past, if you wanted to convert analog to some digital
format you had to have the appropriate PCI card (like pinnacle) to convert
it. I know these cards had their own processor and as such sort of
alleviated the main CPU from some of the conversion processing. SO my
question is, do I still need some high end AGP slotted video display card to
perform these tasks? Or will i be able to use the sort of video card
function built into some MBs? I ask because the camcorder I plan to record
from will probably have firewire built into it. A firewire card is cheaper
than a high end video card. What do you folks recommend? any configs that
you all have used? I plan on using another MSI board, 2-2.2 Ghz AMD XP. 512
MB ram, 233 Mhz bus, some 8x dvd burner...by the way, while I'm here, any
recommendations on what format drives to buy? are dual format dvd burners
the way to go?

thanks in advance

juan

 

[kony]

Ok, please forgive the naiveness of my question. I'm not even sure if this
is the right forum. I am going to attempt to build my first video editing
PC. I have only ever built one other PC for my kid and it worked out just
fine. I used an MSI MB and AMD XP processor for it.

Anyway, here's what I want to do. I would like to build a relatively
inexpensive PC to capture DV from a camorder, edit it on a PC, and then
record to dvd. When i say inexpensive, I mean 600-700 bucks. not including a
monitor. I know in the past, if you wanted to convert analog to some digital
format you had to have the appropriate PCI card (like pinnacle) to convert
it. I know these cards had their own processor and as such sort of
alleviated the main CPU from some of the conversion processing. SO my
question is, do I still need some high end AGP slotted video display card to
perform these tasks? Or will i be able to use the sort of video card
function built into some MBs? I ask because the camcorder I plan to record
from will probably have firewire built into it. A firewire card is cheaper
than a high end video card. What do you folks recommend?

If/when the camcorder has firewire the solution is simple, use *anything*
that has firewire-in... could be a video "editing" card, motherboard
integrated, a PCI card, etc. The actual video card you use has
practically no bearing on it, need not even be relatively good performing,
just adequate for ~30FPS and MPEG decoding, as it typical of anything made
in the last ~6 years or so... as always an AGP video card is preferrible
to a PCI video card.

any configs that
you all have used? I plan on using another MSI board, 2-2.2 Ghz AMD XP. 512
MB ram, 233 Mhz bus, some 8x dvd burner...by the way, while I'm here, any
recommendations on what format drives to buy? are dual format dvd burners
the way to go?

A P4 is "typically" faster at video editing. That's not to suggest an
Athlon XP won't do the job, but it will be slower... don't have an exact
figure but you should be able to find benchmarks on the 'net. It's also
beneficial to have at least two hard drives, one for the source (the
destination drive from the firewire-camcorder-copy) and the other drive
the destination of the edited video.

Might as well get the dual format burner, why limit yourself?

 

[Stacey]

Ok, please forgive the naiveness of my question. I'm not even sure if
this
is the right forum. I am going to attempt to build my first video editing
PC. I have only ever built one other PC for my kid and it worked out just
fine. I used an MSI MB and AMD XP processor for it.

Anyway, here's what I want to do. I would like to build a relatively
inexpensive PC to capture DV from a camorder, edit it on a PC, and then
record to dvd. When i say inexpensive, I mean 600-700 bucks. not including
a monitor. I know in the past, if you wanted to convert analog to some
digital format you had to have the appropriate PCI card (like pinnacle) to
convert it. I know these cards had their own processor and as such sort of
alleviated the main CPU from some of the conversion processing. SO my
question is, do I still need some high end AGP slotted video display card
to perform these tasks?

If the camera is a "DV" camera, all you need is a $20 firewire card. The
video card has -nothing- to do with this. What is needed is a fast hard
drive and a clean system with no garbage running in the background that
would interrupt the "download" of information from the camera. You'll be
"downloading" the video stream straight from the camera to the hard drive
in digital form. There is no hardware or software conversion whatsoever
like there is with analog capture.(it's a totally lossless "download")

Or will i be able to use the sort of video card
function built into some MBs?

Yep, that will work fine but for video editing dual montors is VERY nice to
have. You'll quickly understand what I mean. It's well worth buying a
couple (or an extra) used 17-19in CRT's for this type of work.

Again the video card just needs to have good 2D performance and would be
nice to have dual monitor connections. All the expencive video cards are
about high end 3D performance which you don't need. you should be able to
get by with a $75-$100 video card, a matrox G550 would be perfect. It's the
same needs you'd have for doing office apps like word or excell.

I ask because the camcorder I plan to record
from will probably have firewire built into it. A firewire card is cheaper
than a high end video card.

Yep sure is and it's all you need. Forget all those "real time" cards as
well, the software today does -real time- in software on a fast machine.

What do you folks recommend? any configs that
you all have used? I plan on using another MSI board, 2-2.2 Ghz AMD XP.
512 MB ram, 233 Mhz bus,

I feel that P4's are a MUCH better platform for video editing and encoding
from my experience with both. Get something like a P4P800 (non deluxe) and
the fastest P4 (northwood) you can afford along with dual sticks of ram.
Something like a 2.8C shouldn't be too much and save some money using a
cheap video card.

The last system I built for myself for doing video editing

P4P800
2.8C P4
2 256Mb stick of DDR400 ram
WD 7200 RPM 80 gig 8Mb cach HD
ATI dual head AGP video card

I get by with a small HD by "write to tape" when I'm done editing a video
rather than trying to store them on a hard drive.

I ran a test render file in vegas video 4 (a killer video editing app, easy
to learn and powerful), it took 4:15 minutes on a AMD 2400+ I have and it
took 1:45 on the 2.8 P4. Also on the AMD it couldn't keep up to do -real
time- preview in vegas video while the P4 had no problems, this saves you
from having to buy a $500 "real time" card as well. I'm a big fan of AMD's
for most uses but for video editing, they aren't the ticket. The problem is
the video software uses SSE2 coded apps which are optimized for the P4.
You're fighting a losing battle trying to use an XP chip. Sure people do
use them but if you've ever used both like I have, you wouldn't bother with
an AMD XP for this use.

 

[JAD]

the best investment is as said is firewire interface and instead of
IDE or even SATA- go scsi, get a fast SCSI card and 2 or 4 harddrives
and you'll be cookin with atoms...all else has been suggested.

 

[Commentator]

Waste of money for SCSI.

Standard ATA 7200 RPM drives

AMD 2000

Dropped frames 0, ever.

Processor usage 5%, tops, NOTHING in the background has ever interfered.

Of course, no, I don't do massive downloads while capturing.

HOWEVER,

My system drive is different from the capture drive, and I DO surf,
newsgroups, etc while capturing.

Buy the cheap box, add firewire, make sure the drives are 7200 rpm, have a
separate capture drive from your system drive, video card does not matter,
use W2K if possible, and life will be good.

Keep it simple.

 

[JAD]

you forgot IMO....\

Waste of money for SCSI.

Standard ATA 7200 RPM drives

AMD 2000

Dropped frames 0, ever.

Processor usage 5%, tops, NOTHING in the background has ever interfered.

Of course, no, I don't do massive downloads while capturing.

HOWEVER,

My system drive is different from the capture drive, and I DO surf,
newsgroups, etc while capturing.

Buy the cheap box, add firewire, make sure the drives are 7200 rpm, have a
separate capture drive from your system drive, video card does not matter,
use W2K if possible, and life will be good.

Keep it simple.

 

[JAD]

Processor usage 5%, tops,


While rendering
video?!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Not to doubt you but...I doubt it!.... If your going to be doing this
as an everyday thing or your in the processes of education you will be
old and gray before things get done, not that ATA won't do it, lets
face it video has been getting rendered since PII systems were state
of the art, but you will find NO ata drives in a professional
environment any longer. AAMOF Macs are becoming more and more
prevalent (you think that they would be showing up less and less these
days as the price gets prohibitive). THEN there is jaguar.....

 

[JT]

Processor usage 5%, tops,


While rendering
video?!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Not to doubt you but...I doubt it!.... If your going to be doing this
as an everyday thing or your in the processes of education you will be
old and gray before things get done, not that ATA won't do it, lets
face it video has been getting rendered since PII systems were state
of the art, but you will find NO ata drives in a professional
environment any longer. AAMOF Macs are becoming more and more
prevalent (you think that they would be showing up less and less these
days as the price gets prohibitive). THEN there is jaguar.....

You might want to notice how many Macs are now ATA instead of SCSI

JT

 

[gothika]

Ok, please forgive the naiveness of my question. I'm not even sure if this
is the right forum. I am going to attempt to build my first video editing
PC. I have only ever built one other PC for my kid and it worked out just
fine. I used an MSI MB and AMD XP processor for it.

Anyway, here's what I want to do. I would like to build a relatively
inexpensive PC to capture DV from a camorder, edit it on a PC, and then
record to dvd. When i say inexpensive, I mean 600-700 bucks. not including a
monitor. I know in the past, if you wanted to convert analog to some digital
format you had to have the appropriate PCI card (like pinnacle) to convert
it. I know these cards had their own processor and as such sort of
alleviated the main CPU from some of the conversion processing. SO my
question is, do I still need some high end AGP slotted video display card to
perform these tasks? Or will i be able to use the sort of video card
function built into some MBs? I ask because the camcorder I plan to record
from will probably have firewire built into it. A firewire card is cheaper
than a high end video card. What do you folks recommend? any configs that
you all have used? I plan on using another MSI board, 2-2.2 Ghz AMD XP. 512
MB ram, 233 Mhz bus, some 8x dvd burner...by the way, while I'm here, any
recommendations on what format drives to buy? are dual format dvd burners
the way to go?

thanks in advance

juan

If you go AMD get an Athalon of at least 1 gig. You'll need 1 gig of
ram as well. 512 is just to slow.
You'll need fast hard drives as well. ATA 100 is bottom line. ATA 133
is better.(Regardless of what others say ATA 100 does result in frame
drop)
I use a 1.2 gig Athalon T-Bird with 1 gig of ram and a promise fast
ata 133 with matching maxtor hard drives, one 80 gig and a 40 gig.
(one 80 gig will be sufficient if you don't plan to take on project
that's really big.)
Don't know of any current computers that don't have a firewire
connection, that's all you'll need if you go DV, which is what I
recommend.
P4 is faster for video but does cost more. If you aren't working on
tight production schedules AMD will do.
Any decent 2d card will do for video. I have a Nvidia 64bit AGP card
that works just fine. Get one with a s-video out if possible.
Unless you plan to do high-end audio work than any 16bit duplex sound
card will suffice. 5.1 surround cards have come way down in price in
the past year though.
Turn off all background junk while capturing. Best to dedicate the
system to just doing video capture/editing and use a second machine
for surfing and such.
I use win2k pro and it works just fine without any of the problems
that have to be debugged out of XP. Runs faster on 2k as well.
I do video for a living, so if you need any details on setup e-mail
me.

 

[Kevin Lawton]

| If you go AMD get an Athalon of at least 1 gig. You'll need 1 gig of
| ram as well. 512 is just to slow.
| You'll need fast hard drives as well. ATA 100 is bottom line. ATA 133
| is better.(Regardless of what others say ATA 100 does result in frame
| drop)
| I use a 1.2 gig Athalon T-Bird with 1 gig of ram and a promise fast
| ata 133 with matching maxtor hard drives, one 80 gig and a 40 gig.
| (one 80 gig will be sufficient if you don't plan to take on project
| that's really big.)
| Don't know of any current computers that don't have a firewire
| connection, that's all you'll need if you go DV, which is what I
| recommend.
| P4 is faster for video but does cost more. If you aren't working on
| tight production schedules AMD will do.
| Any decent 2d card will do for video. I have a Nvidia 64bit AGP card
| that works just fine. Get one with a s-video out if possible.
| Unless you plan to do high-end audio work than any 16bit duplex sound
| card will suffice. 5.1 surround cards have come way down in price in
| the past year though.
| Turn off all background junk while capturing. Best to dedicate the
| system to just doing video capture/editing and use a second machine
| for surfing and such.
| I use win2k pro and it works just fine without any of the problems
| that have to be debugged out of XP. Runs faster on 2k as well.
| I do video for a living, so if you need any details on setup e-mail
| me.

Having read over your response to Juan's questions, and being also in the
position of putting a machine together for video editing, I was wondering:

Isn't there some issue over using more than 512 Mb RAM with Windows 2000
which has to be addressed - with a registry hack or something ?

I'd heard that using IDE as fast as ATA-133 was of marginal use, as few IDE
drives could manage a data throughput fast enough to stretch ATA-66. Was
this incorrect, or are you working with very fast IDE drives ? I had heard
that platter rotational speed was the limiting factor when streaming data.
In that case, wouldn't a striped RAID array be better ?

Is there any big advantage to be gained by building a dual-processor
machine, say using a pair of AMD MP2000 CPUs over a single processor at
around XP2400 - XP2600 ? Can video compression or rendering benefit from
multiple processors, or is it better to go for a single fast one ?

I can certainly agree with your statement about having lots of RAM - I guess
the one thing you don't want to be doing while compressing or rendering a
large stream of video data is to start paging out to the swap file !
TIA
Kevin.

 

[kony]

Having read over your response to Juan's questions, and being also in the
position of putting a machine together for video editing, I was wondering:

Isn't there some issue over using more than 512 Mb RAM with Windows 2000
which has to be addressed - with a registry hack or something ?

You might be thinking of Win9x, the System.ini vcache setting... Win2K can
use more than 512MB "out of the box".

I'd heard that using IDE as fast as ATA-133 was of marginal use, as few IDE
drives could manage a data throughput fast enough to stretch ATA-66. Was
this incorrect, or are you working with very fast IDE drives ?

There is very minimal performance benefit to ATA133 over ATA100, most
evident with drives having larger (8MB) cache. Today's modern 60+
GB/platter, 7200 RPM drives do benefit from ATA100 enough to use it over
ATA66, make it worthwhile to buy a PCI controller if at least ATA100 isn't
supported, but on a board old enough that it isn't supported there would
be the other issues of CPU speed, memory, etc, of that age of system.

had heard
that platter rotational speed was the limiting factor when streaming data.
In that case, wouldn't a striped RAID array be better ?

Rotational speed is a limit but so is platter density. A striped RAID
array can easily be better, but in some cases is worse... for example if
the RAID controller is sitting on PCI bus, you're using a PCI capture card
and doing realtime compression, you'd be better off with a single (or
RAID) running from a modern m'board chipset's southbridge integrated
controller since the data rate isn't in excess of the single drive's
throughput and it reduces PCI congestion. Always it's best to have
drive(s) dedicated to the work, not also running the OS.

Is there any big advantage to be gained by building a dual-processor
machine, say using a pair of AMD MP2000 CPUs over a single processor at
around XP2400 - XP2600 ? Can video compression or rendering benefit from
multiple processors, or is it better to go for a single fast one ?

You'd be better off to just use a P4 ~ 2.4G, pair with good memory and o'c
FSB/Mem bus. IIRC, the typical consumer (read affordable) codecs used for
compression can't benefit from SMP, so it'd be an issue of how much
pre-processing or other "background" work is being done... an o'c P4 will
still beat dual XP2600.

I can certainly agree with your statement about having lots of RAM - I guess
the one thing you don't want to be doing while compressing or rendering a
large stream of video data is to start paging out to the swap file !

Rendering needs more memory than typical linear compression would. 512MB
is enough for typical cut/paste/(re)compress type editing, so long as
there isn't a lot of background apps eating up excess. Still today it
makes more sense to look at building around 1GB memory.

 

[JAD]

You might want to notice how many Macs are now ATA instead of SCSI



Maybe true, But not around here anyway.

 

[Stacey]

Kevin Lawton wrote:

I'd heard that using IDE as fast as ATA-133 was of marginal use, as few
IDE drives could manage a data throughput fast enough to stretch ATA-66.
Was
this incorrect, or are you working with very fast IDE drives ? I had
heard that platter rotational speed was the limiting factor when streaming
data. In that case, wouldn't a striped RAID array be better ?

No need for that much throughput with DV data stream. You're right an ATA66
interface is fast enough and the drive rotational speed in steaming data is
the bottleneck. A raid array can introduce problems of it's own with video
capture and there is no advantage in DV capture.

http://www.geocities.com/fotocord/raid.html

Is there any big advantage to be gained by building a dual-processor
machine, say using a pair of AMD MP2000 CPUs over a single processor at
around XP2400 - XP2600 ? Can video compression or rendering benefit from
multiple processors, or is it better to go for a single fast one ?

It will take 2 AMD's to equal the performace of a single P4 in video
applications and will cost as much or more. Why fight what works best for
this application? As I said I like AMD's for most applications but they are
way behind in performance to a P4 in this use.

 

[Stacey]

the best investment is as said is firewire interface and instead of
IDE or even SATA- go scsi, get a fast SCSI card and 2 or 4 harddrives
and you'll be cookin with atoms...all else has been suggested.

The problem with this approach is you are putting even more noise on the
already loaded up PCI buss! For DV capture there is no need for anything
faster than an ata66 7200RPM drive and for -capturing- any CPU sold today
new will work as well. I've used a single 80gig 7200 rpm WD drive (on an XP
1700+) with both the system and capture on the same drive (seperate
partitions) with zero dropped frames. It pulls about 45Mbs in streaming
throughput which is way more than needed for DV capture. With the old
systems using analog capture before the ata66 drives, scsi was the only way
to go...

The difference between a P4 and an AMD comes with rendering and editing
application speed (previewing effects etc) of the video itself. Using a
slow computer to preview effects etc will become so painful you'll quickly
become bored with the process.

 

[kony]

The problem with this approach is you are putting even more noise on the
already loaded up PCI buss! For DV capture there is no need for anything
faster than an ata66 7200RPM drive and for -capturing- any CPU sold today
new will work as well. I've used a single 80gig 7200 rpm WD drive (on an XP
1700+) with both the system and capture on the same drive (seperate
partitions) with zero dropped frames. It pulls about 45Mbs in streaming
throughput which is way more than needed for DV capture. With the old
systems using analog capture before the ata66 drives, scsi was the only way
to go...

Quite true. Too often people fail to realize that the firewire "capture"
is only a file-copy situation, that all frames are already "preserved" and
even an old Pentium 1, PIO mode 1GB HDD, will work for the capture portion
of the exercise providing the board supports busmaster PCI and of course
has the firewire card in it (until you recorder something too big to fit
on 1GB HDD). This is not to discount the benefit of the higher-end P4 for
editing though.

 

[Toshi1873]

A P4 is "typically" faster at video editing. That's not to suggest an
Athlon XP won't do the job, but it will be slower... don't have an exact
figure but you should be able to find benchmarks on the 'net. It's also
beneficial to have at least two hard drives, one for the source (the
destination drive from the firewire-camcorder-copy) and the other drive
the destination of the edited video.

Most folks say a difference of only 5-10% between the
two... which ain't much in my book.

 

[Kevin Lawton]

<snip>
| It will take 2 AMD's to equal the performace of a single P4 in video
| applications and will cost as much or more. Why fight what works best
| for this application? As I said I like AMD's for most applications
| but they are way behind in performance to a P4 in this use.

Okay, thanks for that. I'm thinking cost effectiveness here.
A 2.4 GHz Pentium 4 costs about the same as an AMD XP2600 and m/board prices
are pretty similar.
I take on-board that you're saying that the Intel chip will out-perform the
AMD chip noticeably for the video editing tasks.
This is interesting as for the past few years I've been choosing AMD
processors for my systems on a cost vs performance issue, but this is the
first time I've built a machine specifically for video work. I've not used
an Intel chip since the 733 MHz P-III some time ago.
Is there some particular feature(s) of the Intel CPU which are better suited
to video editing over the AMD ones ? - and is there a particular m/board
chipset which 'brings out the best' for video work ?
Cheers,
Kevin.

 

[Stacey]

Stacey <[email protected]> wrote:

Is there some particular feature(s) of the Intel CPU which are better
suited to video editing over the AMD ones ?

SSE2, the AMD XP chips don't support this code. It's an extention of MMX and
most video editing apps rely heavily on this code for speed. Also P4's just
seem to be more "optimized" for this type of work. The AMD 64 does have
SSE2 support but I have no idea how these compare to a P4 in actual use.

- and is there a particular
m/board chipset which 'brings out the best' for video work ?

The newer dual chanel rams boards help a bunch. I'm happy with my Asus
P4P800 standard. A P4 LOVES memory bandwidth much more than an AMD so dual
chanel ram and the 800Mhz FSB is a big bonus. I'd also say avoid the
prescott and try to find the 800HmzFSB northwood chips. Like I said I too
use AMD chips for most stuff as they have better price/performance but for
video editing it's not the case. I was shocked at the differenece when I
ran some files through vegas video on the two machines!

 

[kony]

Okay, thanks for that. I'm thinking cost effectiveness here.
A 2.4 GHz Pentium 4 costs about the same as an AMD XP2600 and m/board prices
are pretty similar.
I take on-board that you're saying that the Intel chip will out-perform the
AMD chip noticeably for the video editing tasks.
This is interesting as for the past few years I've been choosing AMD
processors for my systems on a cost vs performance issue, but this is the
first time I've built a machine specifically for video work. I've not used
an Intel chip since the 733 MHz P-III some time ago.
Is there some particular feature(s) of the Intel CPU which are better suited
to video editing over the AMD ones ? - and is there a particular m/board
chipset which 'brings out the best' for video work ?

Intel 865 boards are generally best bang for buck, though this is dated
info, seek some benchmarks. Intel still has superior integrated SATA,
NIC, and USB too.

P4 benefits from optimization of the code, the benefit of using one over
an Athlon can depend on that. It is necessary to consider the application
and codec(s) you want to use and seek benchmarks of Athlon vs P4 is using
older software. Often the Athlon will perform much more similarly with
legacy, non-SSE2 code, or even better. The question then becomes what the
budget allows for software upgrades in addition to hardware.

 

[Stacey]

Often the Athlon will perform much more similarly with
legacy, non-SSE2 code, or even better. The question then becomes what the
budget allows for software upgrades in addition to hardware.

In this case IMHO the budget would be better spent on newer software and
slightly older hardware which would outperform old software on the
newest/fastest hardware!