help! need advice computer specs for video editing

stateofflux

hi, i want to get a new computer to edit tv broadcast quality music video's....
could anyone recomend the best specs i should look for in a new computer....

i dont want a a mac so im looking at the new dell xps series with the i7 processor..

i know i need at least a core 2 duo processor, 2gigs of ram but i dont know much about graphic/video cards such as radeon etc...my budget would be 800-900 max

any advice would be appreciated...

ntlbell

for the budget something like a 1530 should be fine

decob

Would really depend on what software and/or I/O card you intend using to edit the tv broadcast quality music video's

stateofflux

decob wrote: »

Would really depend on what software and/or I/O card you intend using to edit the tv broadcast quality music video's

well at the moment i use Magix Movie editor or sony vegas for editing online video's but the video camera i have films at 6000kbps...so not good enough for tv

im getting a lend of a HD camcorder, will film on that and just import AVI's into Magix or vegas on the new computer (i know my current celeron powered laptop wouldnt handle any highresolution video..........

thanks for the help

Dublin_Gunner

Well, if you could build your own, that would probably be your best bet.

But if going for a pre-built PC, just ensure it has a new enough vid card (as a lot of newer software can use that for rendering), a fast quad core CPU (if possible, a dual core will suffice though), a good size HDD (500GB+) and most importantly, lots of ram. You should be looking at around 4gb.

decob

motherboard should also have a decent bus speed, lots of RAM also.

As for hard disk - use seperate disks for the media than the one the operating system and software runs from.

Also no offence, but i would hardly call Magix Movie Edit 'broadcast tv' quality.

stateofflux

wow thanks for all the help...much appreciated...i know magix is fairly basic but im not spielbergo! haha... just doing a raw fast edited music video that doesnt look rediculously blocky or crap on a home television

kyle

Dublin_Gunner

Why not download thevtrial for premiere pro? 30 days of free usage and a lot better quality- should be plenty of time to do your video

pandaboy

would you consider going to mac? the 2.4Ghz Macbook fits your budget and should be more than capable to help you with this.

There are a few things you need to consider when getting a comp for this.

RAM - If you're going to be working with HD material (which is the standard norm nowadays, cheap HD cameras will do the basics for you) then I recommend a min of 4GB of RAM. To future proof the machine then you are going to have to get a machine where you can upgrade the RAM by more than 4GB. I'm currently using an iMac with 2GB of RAM and it's working fine but that's for standard DV files.

Processor - Obviously dual core as a minimum but quad core is what I would more than definitely recommend. Better processing speed so you don't over clock the machine.

Front Side Bus - You'll need a nice speed for this - future proof machine then I'd go for 1066MHz

HD - External Media always. You can back up what's on your comp and it's a lot easier to travel around with. The HD in the machine, size shouldn't matter once you're using external media but speed is the key for this. 7200 RPM is an industry standard - though this has now increased to 15000RPM. I don't know which PCs operate firewire but this is much faster and a whole lot more reliable than USB. A HD with firwire just flies through the files.

Do you have any machines in mind?

Dublin_Gunner

pandaboy wrote: »

would you consider going to mac? the 2.4Ghz Macbook fits your budget and should be more than capable to help you with this.

There are a few things you need to consider when getting a comp for this.

RAM - If you're going to be working with HD material (which is the standard norm nowadays, cheap HD cameras will do the basics for you) then I recommend a min of 4GB of RAM. To future proof the machine then you are going to have to get a machine where you can upgrade the RAM by more than 4GB. I'm currently using an iMac with 2GB of RAM and it's working fine but that's for standard DV files.

Processor - Obviously dual core as a minimum but quad core is what I would more than definitely recommend. Better processing speed so you don't over clock the machine.

Front Side Bus - You'll need a nice speed for this - future proof machine then I'd go for 1066MHz

HD - External Media always. You can back up what's on your comp and it's a lot easier to travel around with. The HD in the machine, size shouldn't matter once you're using external media but speed is the key for this. 7200 RPM is an industry standard - though this has now increased to 15000RPM. I don't know which PCs operate firewire but this is much faster and a whole lot more reliable than USB. A HD with firwire just flies through the files.

Do you have any machines in mind?

15k rpm on scsi or sas drives, which would cost a fortune, let alone the required controller card for it, which is an exra cost.

FSB doesnt matter with Core i7 or AMD processors, as it really only effects memory throughput, and both of those have on die memory controllers. 800mhz is more than enough for HDD traffic, as the max you're realistically going to get is around 150MB/s from any HDD (and that would only be through RAID). i.e a 1066 FSB gives a theoretical maximum of 8.5GB/s, so as you see, the FSB speed matters little on modern machines.

External media?? You get much better throughput if you have some secondary internal drives, rather than using USB. And you get the same redundancy. Just because its external does not mean it wont fail.

Sure, back stuff up to an external if you like, but always use drives through the internal interfaces. eSATA gives SATA (300MB/s theoretical max, limited by actual drive throughput) performance though.

stateofflux

thanks dublin_gunner for letting me know about the premiere trial...i'll try that....

also thanks pandaboy for giving us the mac specs....i know that macs are great for video and audio....but im just too used to my pc's now...

ive just one more question...is there a huge difference between the different graphics cards stocked by dell... 256mb ATI Radeons vs the 512mb or 512mb NVIDIA geFORCE ?

pandaboy

stateofflux wrote: »

thanks dublin_gunner for letting me know about the premiere trial...i'll try that....

also thanks pandaboy for giving us the mac specs....i know that macs are great for video and audio....but im just too used to my pc's now...

ive just one more question...is there a huge difference between the different graphics cards stocked by dell... 256mb ATI Radeons vs the 512mb or 512mb NVIDIA geFORCE ?

No worries man, you're welcome

What kind of film footage will you be working with? standard Def or Hi Def? I have a 256MB ATI Radeon and it works fine but then I'm only doing with the basics with Final Cut Pro 6.

The Nvidia GEForce 512mb is a fantastic graphics card. A lot of the middle scale Macs - Macbook Pro, iMac and Mac Pro come with these as standard. I know a few guys that will use 512MB as a minimum spec so they don't have to upgrade in the future.

If you're just starting out then go for the 256MB and see ow that goes but make sure that the machine you get is user upgradable, that's the problem with macs - you can't upgrade the graphics crad unless you want to pay 2K for a Mac Pro.

Dublin_Gunner

To be honest, there's not much difference between editing pics/vids etc on a Mac or PC, its really what you prefer.

In fact, most of the Adobe apps are a bit more polished on the PC these days for some reason.

I have a 512mb X2600 in my Mac Pro at the mo, and it does fine. But for a PC, you can get a pretty damn good card for €100 or so, and just slot it into the PC.

I'm selling a 9800GT for less than that at the moment, you just have to have a look around.

I would certainly go for something modern, with 512mb ram. The extra processing cores on the card will speed things up significantly, and the ram will help with the render speed also.

I'm currently messing around with Premiere Pro & After Effects CS4 trials, and getting some decent results on my Mac. Its good software.

irishdigitaldiv

Well, if its professional content for broadcast an Avid based system such as "Media Composer" would be ideal. But most TV stations will only accept footage in the DVCAM format or HDCAM format at the least. The BBC for example will only allow 50% of their HD footage to be taken from HDV (which is highly compressed) Most consumer/prosumer cameras only record in HDV or AVCHD. Also for broadcast certain colours-sets have to be used, audio has to be perfect and the editing has to be spot on