Hello all,
Looking at getting back into video editing. Have been quite partial to Mac and FCP in the past however instead of spending £1400 on a decent mac with FCPX I figure I could get something around half that price on PC. Will most likely be using one of the reasonably priced Sony Vegas Movie Studio packages.
So I thought I'd ask a quick few questions, collect a few opinions before I make my purchase.
In fact, treat me like a virgin to editing.
In layman's terms please tell me how each of these components affect editing.
RAM:
CPU:
GPU:
HARD DRIVE:
GRAPHIC CARD:
Bear in mind most of the editing will be mainly for short films, go pro footage and computer game footage captured from gaming consoles at 1080p.
Some effects will probably be used but I'm not planning on taking on Transformers any time soon.
here's a couple of different PCs I've been putting together, would be great to hear what you guys think of them.
OPTION A
AMD A10-5800K APU QUAD CORE APU(3.8Ghz)
ASUS® A88XM-PLUS
8GB Kingston DDR3 1600MHz
2GB AMD RADEON™ R7 250
120GB KINGSTON V300 SSD
OPTION B
AMD A4-6300 APU
ASUS® A58B-E FM2+
8GB Kingston DDR3 1600MHz
AMD Radeon HD 7000 (integrated)
1TB 3.5" SATA-III 6GB/s
OPTION C
AMD A10-7850K Quad Core APU (4Ghz) Radeon R7 Series Graphics
ASUS A58M-E FM2+ (M-ATX, DDR3, USB 2.0 3Gb/s)
8GB Kingston Dual-DDR3 1600Mhz (1x8gb)
(not sure if i want to go for AMD or Nvidia GEForce graphics card, just trying to avoid integrated.
500GB 3.5"SATA-III 6GV/s HDD 7200RPM 16MB Cache
Hope I'm not rambling too much, just havent slept much in the last 36 hours so feeling kinda loopy.
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Personally I'd recommend an Intel Core-i based rig with Nvidia GPU.
I am not sure how Vegas utilize the hardware but the current general state of video editing software is that:
1> A lot of video processing algorithms are done via CPU only.
2> The more common hardware acceleration APIs are Intel QuickSync and Nvidia CUDA
(few software take advantage of AMD's VCE acceleration API)
Since Intel's CPU usually out perform AMD's in terms of numerical processing, I'd suggest getting at least a Core i5.
The availability of QuickSync may also give a huge boost in performance when capturing video (depending on the capturing software)
GPU: Nvidia GTX750 or derivative
HDD: 1TB or above. Forget about SSD unless you store your video files and editing materials on another harddrive -
For the nth time, with the possible exception of certain Intel processors, I don't have/ever owned anything whose name starts with "i".
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If you can afford something better than an A4, it will be worth spending the extra money.
If you want to get an AMD CPU for video editing and don't intend to use APU graphics, buy an AMD FX-4300, or AMD FX-6300 instead of a AMD A10-5800K or buy an AMD FX-4350 or AMD FX-6350 instead of a AMD A10-7850K. The FX series offers better multi-core processing. An A-series APU offers no advantages other than maybe a lower TDP if you plan to install an discrete video card, particularly one from NVIDIA. -
The main reason I've been preferring AMD in the various options is because I'm using PCSPECIALIST to build my editing PC and it seems like most of their Video Editing Suggestions are AMD based.
AMD is also cheaper and I'm budgeting for about £500
Sure, i5 or i7 might give me an extra 30 percent raw performance but also double the cost of the cpu. And I just couldn't imagine having performance & editing issues with an quad core AMD based CPU for the editing I'm looking at.
Due to budget limitations, the choice can only really be; AMD quad core (3.8Ghz), AMD dual core (4.2Ghz) or i3 Dual Core (3.70Ghz)...
...Thoughts? -
Tell you what, instead of debating back and forth the merits and drawbacks of each individual piece of hardware, I'll issue you all a challenge.
Go to pcspecialist.co.uk , click configure a desktop on the left hand side and build the best super editing computer for £500 with a 10 per cent buffer (£450-550) and post the CPU, motherboard, RAM, graphics card and hard disk choice on here.
click proceed, then click quote and copy and paste.
ez. -
Most of the PCs I put together have three hard drives. One for boot, one for edit and one for archive. I use a 120GB SSD for boot and 1 - 2TB HDDs for the others.
SSDs are a good choice for boot drives and the prices for the 120GB SSD drives is reasonable. Larger SSDs are a waste of money and smaller ones fill up too quickly, IMO.
You didn't mention OS, but I still prefer Windows 7, 64bit. And 8GB of RAM is good. You could add more later if really needed.
I build mostly AMD PCs, but that's more for cost savings than concerns about performance. I use mostly Gigabyte motherboards as I've had the best luck with them.
I don't really care about GPU performance and depend more on CPU performance for editing and encoding. Since I usually encode H.264 formats, I prefer multicore CPUs. The one in my Computer Details is a 8 core and preforms very well for encoding. But a quad core CPU is still a good choice for most uses.
I would also suggest a good, name brand, power supply. Not a place to save money if it fails and takes out the motherboard.
Since I do a lot of long encodes, I also prefer liquid cooling for the CPU. I have two PCs with Corsair water cooling. A similar setup runs about $60US at present. -
I'll tell you what... You don't know what you need. We tell you what you need and you say you can't afford it. Save your money and get what you need, not what you can afford right now. Your budget should be somewhere around £600 - £650 (including VAT) to get what you need. For one thing, you don't have enough money in your budget for a large second hard drive, which you do need.
I looked hard at the AMD Kaveri A10 APUs before I built my present PC. They have nicer graphics than an Intel Haswell i5 but their processing power is not as good as one would expect because the cores share some resources. The price difference between a A10-7850K and some of the Hasewell i5s is not that much. A10-7850K typically sells for between $175 and $185 here, while the i5-4570 typically sells for between $200 and $205. -
Case
COOLERMASTER ELITE 311 BLUE CASE
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™i5 Quad Core Processor i5-4460 (3.2GHz) 6MB Cache
Motherboard
Gigabyte Z97-HD3: ATX, LG1150, USB 3.0, SATA 6GBs
Memory (RAM)
4GB KINGSTON DUAL-DDR3 1600MHz (1 x 4GB)
Graphics Card
1GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 750 - DVI, mHDMI, VGA - 3D Vision Ready
1st Hard Disk
1TB 3.5" SATA-III 6GB/s HDD 7200RPM 32MB CACHE
1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM
Power Supply
CORSAIR 450W VS SERIES™ VS-450 POWER SUPPLY
Processor Cooling
INTEL STANDARD CPU COOLER
Sound Card
ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Wireless/Wired Networking
10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT - AS STANDARD ON ALL PCs
USB Options
MIN. 2 x USB 3.0 & 4 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL + MIN. 2 FRONT PORTS
Power Cable
1 x 1 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead)
Operating System
NO OPERATING SYSTEM REQUIRED
Office Software
NO OFFICE SOFTWARE
Anti-Virus
NO ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE
Warranty
3 Year Standard Warranty (1 Month Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour)
Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)
Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 9 to 11 working days
Quantity
1
Price: £518.00 including VAT and delivery.
http://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/quotes/intel-haswell-pc/v6UapEVMhb/ -
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[QUOTE=se7e11;2326362] 4GB RAM is enough for a well maintained PC. Unless you load a lot of crap-wares that load on start-up.
You can also reuse your present HDD if possible.
If having money to spare, consider enhancing the CPU, the PowerSupply or the Case.
A larger case can improve ventilation a lot and lower the chance of overheating
You can save even further by dropping the GTX750 and simply use the Intel HD Graphics, while adding to 8GB RAM.
As I said earlier, many video editing algorithms are CPU-based. For example: the famous x264 encoder, most of it are CPU routines while only a fraction of works can be offloaded to graphics chipsets (the lookahead part); Also the OpenCV library, only a small(?) part of routines has CUDA or OpenCL counterparts.
GPU accelerated editing sometimes have accuracy/sync problems and therefore its use is limited(at present).
Take note though, I have skipped M$ WINDOWS in that list, since I assumed you have an existing non-OEM Windows installation. If not, take that into account. -
I guess you don't realize that using the same hard drive for the OS and rendering your edits will slow the process down considerably. Hah! USB 2.0 hard drives are OK for storing the end results, but they are too slow to be helpful to you while rendering.
Since MavericTSE did not include a Windows OS, and it sounds like you may not have a Windows 7 64-bit or Windows 8.x 64-bit license that you can re-use, add another £65 for an OS to his figure. Where are we now with the price? Rapidly approaching that £600 number are we? LOLLast edited by usually_quiet; 9th Jun 2014 at 10:00.