Video Editing Computer Advise

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With the birth of my son I have TONS of DV Video that I have been
stacking up and now needs to be edited and put on DVD. I have delayed
building a new PC long enough. I know that you need a kick butt CPU
and a Ton of memory.

Here is what I intend to get so far:
CPU 3.4Ghz Intel
Motherboard Asus P5AD2 Premium
Memory 1Gig DDR2/533 CAS 3 RAM
Nvidia 6600GT 128Meg Video Card
Pioneer A0X DVD-R
System Hard Drive (c:) SATA 10,000 RPM 74Gig

Where I am unclear is on the Hard Drive Configuration. When editing
Video I understand that there are performance gains to be had by
reading from one Drive while writing to another. But How fast should
these drives be? I can get 2-200 Gig Drives for the same price as 1
74Gig 'fast' drive. Can a 3.4Ghz Processor render video faster then a
5600 or 7200 Hard Drive can provide therefore warranting the purchase
of 10K drives?

Thanks for any advice you can offer. Additionally do you see any flaws
in my intended hardware choices?

Sincerely,
Vince
 
With the birth of my son I have TONS of DV Video that I have been
stacking up and now needs to be edited and put on DVD. I have delayed
building a new PC long enough. I know that you need a kick butt CPU
and a Ton of memory.
Click to expand...

Two years ago you needed "a kick butt CPU and a ton of memory". Now you can
put together a very nice video editing machine for around $1200.
Here is what I intend to get so far:
CPU 3.4Ghz Intel
Click to expand...

The one area where Intel still shines is video editing--this is a good
choice. But don't pay a large premium for the 3.4 GHz over a slower P4 if
it means compromising in other areas. If price is no object then consider
a dual-Xeon or dual-Opteron setup.
Motherboard Asus P5AD2 Premium
Click to expand...

Looks like a really nice board for video editing. Supports two separate
RAIDs it looks like.
Memory 1Gig DDR2/533 CAS 3 RAM
Click to expand...

If you can afford 2 gig go for it.
Nvidia 6600GT 128Meg Video Card
Click to expand...

If your sole use is video editing this may be overkill. Any contemporary
board with dual monitor support would be fine. You should get dual
monitors--most of the better video editing applications will make good use
of them.
Pioneer A0X DVD-R
Click to expand...

If you don't need the software bundle then you can save a little by going
with the 108 instead of the a08--only difference is the model number, the
software bundle, and the box it comes in.
System Hard Drive (c:) SATA 10,000 RPM 74Gig

Where I am unclear is on the Hard Drive Configuration. When editing
Video I understand that there are performance gains to be had by
reading from one Drive while writing to another. But How fast should
these drives be? I can get 2-200 Gig Drives for the same price as 1
74Gig 'fast' drive. Can a 3.4Ghz Processor render video faster then a
5600 or 7200 Hard Drive can provide therefore warranting the purchase
of 10K drives?
Click to expand...

Any contemporary drive is plenty fast for video editing. Go for capacity
over speed--with video editing it is difficult to have too much disk
capacity. You'd do better to have one drive for the system drive and one
or more for the working storage. If you can afford to it might be
interesting to do something creative with the dual RAID controllers on that
board.

If you haven't already done so, you might want to check out
<http://www.videoguys.com>--they're a commercial site but they do know
their stuff and they have a number of system recommendations for different
purposes. Especially read the section on their "Challenge I".
 
John,

Thank you so much for taking the time to answer my questions! I really
appreciate it. I do however have a couple follow up questions.

I intend the 10,000 RPM drive to be for my System drive as with the
Video card I do like to play some Games from time to time.

Thanks for you advice on the "Size over Speed" recommendation on Hard
Drives! Would the whole process be faster if I had my "fast system
drive" and 2 'Normal' Video Drives, 1 for raw video captured from the
Camera and one "output drive" for finished video? Or am I
overestimating the I/O of this process and overkilling it and could get
away with 1 "Video Drive". OR should I "get creative ;-)" and Stripe 2
drives (RAID0) and use that as a BIG Video Drive?

Thanks again,
Vince
 
John,

Thank you so much for taking the time to answer my questions! I really
appreciate it. I do however have a couple follow up questions.

I intend the 10,000 RPM drive to be for my System drive as with the
Video card I do like to play some Games from time to time. But
regarding the Video Card, in reading the information on
videoguys.com/Challenge I they indicate that they seeked out a OpenGL
Video Card for faster rendering in some applications. Should this be
something I should be doing as well. The Nvidia GeForce 6600GT has
"Full API Support for OpenGL including OpenGL 1.5" and it seems that
the Quatro4 GPU's are designed specifically for OpenGL. Any advice?

Thanks for you advice on the "Size over Speed" recommendation on Hard
Drives! Would the whole process be faster if I had my "fast system
drive" and 2 'Normal' Video Drives, 1 for raw video captured from the
Camera and one "output drive" for finished video? Or am I
overestimating the I/O of this process and overkilling it and could get
away with 1 "Video Drive". OR should I "get creative ;-)" and Stripe 2
drives (RAID0) and use that as a BIG Video Drive?

Thanks again,
Vince
 
John,

Thank you so much for taking the time to answer my questions! I really
appreciate it. I do however have a couple follow up questions.

I intend the 10,000 RPM drive to be for my System drive as with the
Video card I do like to play some Games from time to time.

Thanks for you advice on the "Size over Speed" recommendation on Hard
Drives! Would the whole process be faster if I had my "fast system
drive" and 2 'Normal' Video Drives, 1 for raw video captured from the
Camera and one "output drive" for finished video?
Click to expand...

That would be ideal.
Or am I
overestimating the I/O of this process and overkilling it and could get
away with 1 "Video Drive".
Click to expand...

You could run just fine in that configuration.
OR should I "get creative ;-)" and Stripe 2
drives (RAID0) and use that as a BIG Video Drive?
Click to expand...

Personally, if it was my machine and budget was unlimited I'd make a RAID0
array for temporary working storage and a RAID-5 array on the other
controller for permanent storage.
 
John,

Thank you so much for taking the time to answer my questions! I really
appreciate it. I do however have a couple follow up questions.

I intend the 10,000 RPM drive to be for my System drive as with the
Video card I do like to play some Games from time to time. But
regarding the Video Card, in reading the information on
videoguys.com/Challenge I they indicate that they seeked out a OpenGL
Video Card for faster rendering in some applications. Should this be
something I should be doing as well. The Nvidia GeForce 6600GT has
"Full API Support for OpenGL including OpenGL 1.5" and it seems that
the Quatro4 GPU's are designed specifically for OpenGL. Any advice?

Thanks for you advice on the "Size over Speed" recommendation on Hard
Drives! Would the whole process be faster if I had my "fast system
drive" and 2 'Normal' Video Drives, 1 for raw video captured from the
Camera and one "output drive" for finished video? Or am I
overestimating the I/O of this process and overkilling it and could get
away with 1 "Video Drive". OR should I "get creative ;-)" and Stripe 2
drives (RAID0) and use that as a BIG Video Drive?

Thanks again,
Vince
 
Here is what I intend to get so far:
CPU 3.4Ghz Intel
Motherboard Asus P5AD2 Premium
Memory 1Gig DDR2/533 CAS 3 RAM
Click to expand...


more ram. seriously. i was amazed when i tested out vegas on a
multilayer composite i managed to chew through 1GB ram and another GB of
swap...

System Hard Drive (c:) SATA 10,000 RPM 74Gig
Click to expand...

good choice, raptors are cool :) rest of the config sounds fine.
 
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