Best PC for Video editing

[pg55555]

My niece intends to pursue a professional career in video / film production.

She is just starting, fresh from high school, so the family is helping with some gifts: her mother just bought a semi pro video camera.
My intention is to buy her a computer to help her in her video cretion.
But although not a computer novice myself (I have built my own computers for the last 15 years), it is not clear to me what are the key elementes for a video editing machines. Most of the hardware review sites center on gaming machines, no in video editing.
Of course, more power is always better. But money is always a constrain, so the question is what would be the key elements that define a video editing machine, where you have to put most of your money while saving in other parts.

Assuming an $500 budget, what would be your configuration of choise
- CPU: more MHz or more cores?
- GPU: do you need power here, or an integrated video is enough? would you go for a HD 4870X2 or a HD4830 putting the extra money in a faster CPU?
- Memory: 4 GB enough?
- HD: I was thinking of 500 GB
- What if you have another $100. What would you improve

Pablo

[guns1inger]

If you are running XP, 2 GB is more than enough for editing. If it is Vista, 4 GB (but you will only see 3.5 if running 32 bit).

More cores over more MHz would be my choice.

A good GPU, but not necessarily a top of the line gamer card. Something that has hardware playback assist and CUDA type support, but don't blow big bucks at the expensive of CPU.

Two HDDs in the case, minimum. Not partitions, two physical drives. Smaller drive (80 - 120 GB) for the OS and applications, the second for data. Add a large external drive as soon as you can afford it down the track.

[lordsmurf]

Intel -- not AMD.
A lot of video software prefers, requires or simply works best on Intel architecture. It's mostly video gamers and non-pros that praise AMD.

Given how crappy a lot of software still is (even pro software), a dual-core with a lot of Ghz/Mhz is better than 4 cores with less per-core Ghz/Mhz. More cores does not mean more performance. I have a quad core that is slower at some tasks that a 5+ years old single-core system, simply due to the software only being able to use one core at a time.

[Starman*]

For standard video you do not need anything special, it just takes longer on slow equipment. Not hugely important for final rendering (you can leave running overnight or during day) but speed helps when you are actually editing.

Given your niece's proposed career you probably need something that is HD capable. Even if the camera is not HD she can always use video from other HD sources. As noted by guns1linger you do not need a top of the line graphics card (and you won't get one on the budget!). I edit mpeg video on a 3.2GHz pc with onboard video, and a 1.8GHz pic with 64M graphics. No good for HD however (not even playback).

Although not part of the request, don't forget about the cost of editing software. That could be a lot more than the cost of the pc. I looked up Adobe Premiere CS4, now $800 gulp! Sony Vegas $85-100, excellent value. There goes your extra $100! I used to use Premiere because it has a lot of 3rd party software available. I presently use Vegas for most basic stuff and do additional special effects by improvising. Imo freeware editing software is user unfriendly and a huge pain. If you want suggestions from others on this subject, ask.

A decent graphic editor is also handy for being creative (Paint Shop Pro and up in payware; the GIMP or equivalent in freeware). Unfortunately Photoshop tends to be the graphics standard for compatibility with video apps.

[johns0]

Amd phenom II quad core is good for video editing on a modest budget,dont care for intel myself since i do lots of computer servicing.

[edDV]

My niece intends to pursue a professional career in video / film production.

She is just starting, fresh from high school, so the family is helping with some gifts: her mother just bought a semi pro video camera.
My intention is to buy her a computer to help her in her video cretion.
But although not a computer novice myself (I have built my own computers for the last 15 years), it is not clear to me what are the key elementes for a video editing machines. Most of the hardware review sites center on gaming machines, no in video editing.
Of course, more power is always better. But money is always a constrain, so the question is what would be the key elements that define a video editing machine, where you have to put most of your money while saving in other parts.

Assuming an $500 budget, what would be your configuration of choise
- CPU: more MHz or more cores?
- GPU: do you need power here, or an integrated video is enough? would you go for a HD 4870X2 or a HD4830 putting the extra money in a faster CPU?
- Memory: 4 GB enough?
- HD: I was thinking of 500 GB
- What if you have another $100. What would you improve

Pablo

ID the camcorder that was purchased (model number) and the school she intends.

Novice pro video has little to do with equipment and more with technique. What part of the industry interests her?

Concentrate on tuition rather than hardware.

Whatever you buy now will be obsolete for any post learning productive work.

[TimA-C]

I second Lord Smurf's comments. A fast dual-core - preferably Intel for Video editing - is almost certainly better value than a slower quad-core. (AMDs are certainly faster for normal file I/O and general use but they just don't have as much grunt for the heavy-duty number-crunching that video encoding demands. And Yes, I am a long-term AMD fan but recognise that in this one area, Intels are still the better choice.)

I'd also push for at least two hard drives as fast as you can afford (check the drive benchmarks at Tom's Hardware, AnandTech, and HardTune) and process the video from one to the other - it really does make a BIG difference to encoding times. Make sure you put in a decent power supply and that the motherboard is based on a stable chipset - I prefer the nVidia nForce chipsets but I'm sure others will give their preferred choices.

Basically I'd say use as good quality core components (Motherboard, power-supply, memory) as you can afford (obviously without going too far over the top ) and make it as upgradeable as you can so that more memory, extra hard drives, faster CPUs etc. can be added as her interest and experience increases and as more funds become available.

[Nelson37]

Don't forget to take a good look at cooling. Long encodes can really heat up a processor.

Don't know how fast she will be moving into this, but when looking at software, there is another factor in addition to the cost and features. Being skilled with most Adobe products, and some others, is more of a marketable job skill than becoming knowledgable with some less expensive products.

Consider what would be the value today of getting really, really good with Wordperfect, as opposed to Word? No marketable job skill there.

You haven't mentioned monitor at all, I think the budget may have to be upgraded. This can be done later, but at some point you will be putting over $200.00 into a nice monitor.

Most video cards will also output to TV, HDMI and others, this could be handy for preview and possibly presentations.

[Starman*]

I echo the comments about making a pro career. An appreciation of the requirements and costs can be found on film school and production company websites. There are also many different aspects of movie making at the pro level. You need to know your interests before investing time and money. Very competitive. Like would-be actors working as waiters, would-be directors are mostly going to end up with grunt jobs.

Basic home equipment allows the fundamentals of producing, directing, editing to be explored. It may help your niece to find if she's any good at "making movies" and putting together a portfolio to show to interested parties (companies or schools). With respect to the creative side, spending large sums of money on software is not necessary imo. As commented, ideas and technique count. Start cheap and work up if necessary.

[Starman*]

After my earlier response I thought about the limitations on the shooting side - single camera, probably no boom mike, studio lights, dolly etc. There's bound to be a level of amateurism. That's where innovation and improvisation come in. "Blair Witch" would be an excellent example.

In the light of this thread, I just watched "I, Robot" on TV, the ads in between and a couple of TV shows. I was quite surprised to find that 99.99% of editing is straight cuts. Very occasionally, a zoom, pan, dissolve or fade. Anyone who's made a movie knows how cheesy excessive effects can be. Bottom line is that the editing side does not have to be/is not that sophisticated for most productions.

I looked up work at Pixar (which obviously is animation-oriented) and they have clear guidelines, as an example: Pixar Jobs

[edDV]

90% of "editing" is fixing problems. A lot of this is skilled compositing to hide flaws or allow new dialog without lip sync issues. The pros that can do that get the high pay. It costs a fortune to rebook actors and re-shoot in the field.

[zoobie]

the only thing "blair witch" demonstrated is that any movie (even a hand-held B&W $50,000 prank) made with "witch" in the title will be viewed by several million teenage girls and very young women both with witchcraft fantasies

[pepegot1]

Try an Intel i7 for fast encoding.

[Starman*]

the only thing "blair witch" demonstrated is that any movie (even a hand-held B&W $50,000 prank) made with "witch" in the title will be viewed by several million teenage girls and very young women both with witchcraft fantasies

I thought it was very well done and innovative. If you have poor equipment, what could be better camouflage than making a movie about a bunch of amateurs making a movie with poor equipment. If I could put "witch" in the title, earn $250million, 11 wins, 16 nominations I would not care two hoots about demographics!

[guns1inger]

Editing is not about cutting. Editing is about structure, timing, flow (and continuity, and fixing ****-ups etc). Even Blair Witch wasn't particularly innovative or new. Mostly it was the clever viral marketing, not the finished product, that got the bums on seats.

Watch any good doco on someone like Walter Murch or listen to some of the better director's commentaries and you will find out how important an editor is the finished result, and surprisingly, how little they talk about the transitions available in Avid.

In the TV world it is more about making sure the audience doesn't notice that fat guy number 3's donut keeps getting bigger and smaller throughout the scene (30 years ago it was about hiding the ever changing length of cigarettes).

[TimA-C]

Try an Intel i7 for fast encoding.

Don't think it's going to fit in the budget!

[Starman*]

Re Guns1inger comments, professional production editors have somewhat different priorities to someone editing at home, learning the ropes. That is partly what this thread is concerned with. Sure, getting Joe out of the pub to redo his scene can be a diplomatic nightmare. I've already commented about the simplicity of professional editing (as it appears in the product) and how it relates to home editing setup.

Blair Witch had good box office ratings for months. It airs numerous times on TV each year. Could it be that audiences liked what they saw and still see? How many excuses do you want to make for a movie being successful and appealing to the public?

[guns1inger]

What the public like, and what is actually good, rarely go hand in hand - take Transformers, for example. Made tons, worthless POS of a film. I didn't say Blair Witch was bad, I said it wasn't original (see : Cannibal Holocaust (1980) for the whole 'lost film" trick done well). It was simply a brilliant piece of marketing that got the idea into the zeigeist at the right moment.

But this thread isn't about Joe Blow editing his home movies, it is about a budding film maker. Not the same thing at all (Joe Blow's films are bloody awful and incredibly boring, but the transitions are nice and swirly, and never the same transition twice )

[TimA-C]

Blair Witch had good box office ratings for months. It airs numerous times on TV each year. Could it be that audiences liked what they saw and still see? How many excuses do you want to make for a movie being successful and appealing to the public?

This member of the audience definitely didn't like The Blair Witch Shite rip-off Load of B0ll0cks!

As has been pointed out, the OP just wants some spec recommendations for a PC suitable for a novice film-maker, not Steven Spielberg, not Hitchcock, and, hopefully, not Michael Bay. (or those tw@ts that made Blair Yawn pile of pooh! Sorry, but I REALLY hated that "film"!)

[Starman*]

I used Blair Witch to illustrate a point I was trying to make. It was a movie that everybody would know. I didn't expect to have to go walkabout on it.

What you are going to do movie-wise is going to define what hardware. If you don't intend to get adequate software, there's no special requirement for a pc other than being able to input video. If the camera is not HD then that also may affect both the above.

I think it's important to think a bit further than the direct request because you don't know the requester's familiarity. No good for pg55555 to buy a pc and find he has to spend $800 on software he wasn't expecting. That's not a recommendation, it's a disservice.

[pg55555]

Thanks for the recomendations. I have now a clearer picture:
- Better Intel
- Better MHz vs Cores, but go for a dual core as a minimum
- Good Memory
- Two HD
- Nvidia card, CUDA capable, not necessary Top

Based on that, we could go with (and possible upgrades if the budget allows):
- Core2 Duo E7500 (upgrade E8400)
- Mother based on P45 chipset, with eSata and 1394 conectors
- Video Card GeForce 9600 GS or GT with HDMI output (upgrade GTS 250)
- 4 GB memory
- Two 500 GB HD
- Good 500 W PSU

I have the monitor (19 LCD) case and OS.

I still have some doubts regarding the number of cores: it seems that video editing / processing is one of those applications that can benefit a lot of multithreading, reson why sofware developers are working on that.

Pablo

[Richard_G]

I'm surprised everybody has stuck to the PC platform when I thought most pro work is with Final Cut on a Mac? While I'm no fan of Macs myself, if this is for preparation into working in the industry wouldn't it be better to become proficient in something the industry uses?

[Bjs]

One system that comes close for money

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883103177

Purchase lcd and quality power board to protect investment.

Add later, blueray burner when price comes down, and choice of software for editing avchd, etc.

====

Forget all the rubbish about "intel vs amd", both are capable.

And the key issue when building any system is "buss front side mhz" ... if its not the fastest available you will be behind in any case.

====

Proficient in something the industry uses?

Not everyone use's mac's in the industry, I guarantee it.

[Skith]

I am surprised no one has mentioned buying a pre-configured workstation. I could be wrong, but I imagine you could save some money by doing so. It may also be beneficial in terms of warranty/support- unless pg55555 plans to play that role in full.

As for recommendations, I will leave that to others.

[edDV]

I am surprised no one has mentioned buying a pre-configured workstation. I could be wrong, but I imagine you could save some money by doing so. It may also be beneficial in terms of warranty/support- unless pg55555 plans to play that role in full.

As for recommendations, I will leave that to others.

That assumes a workstation is required. Unless you are editing uncompressed HD or SD, you can build a machine for well under $1K. One should avoid "game" optimized machines because they optimize in ways that go unused for video editing.

Problem is most have less than a clue what "video editing" means and when asked can't explain their needs.

[edDV]

I'm surprised everybody has stuck to the PC platform when I thought most pro work is with Final Cut on a Mac? While I'm no fan of Macs myself, if this is for preparation into working in the industry wouldn't it be better to become proficient in something the industry uses?

Not true at all. First you need to define "pro work". Final Cut Pro certainly has a niche for certain types of editing but Windows dominates most higher end apps. Most people looking for a career in video aren't necessarily looking to be a FCP freelance editor. There are many other higher paid job categories. Most of those are on specialized Windows or UNIX platforms but to the operator the OS is mostly hidden except for file management.

When Apple slipped way behind on hardware in the late 90's early 2000's most serious apps went NT exclusive. Adobe abandoned Mac OS and went full NT/Windows. Avid only offered their low end on Mac. When Apple moved to Intel hardware, Adobe and AVID gave more support to the Mac. The typical Adobe/AVID operator can move from the Windows to Mac version with near identical screens.

Most "video professionals" are independents. There are a number of other apps that carter to this market from Sony, Canopus, Pinnacle and Matrox. FCP competes here too but is not the leader. Apple doesn't have a broad enough catalog to satisfy the one man band.

[lordsmurf]

I would highly suggest one of the HP Slimline systems (best prices found at Amazon.com). For example, here is an HP with a 2.5Ghz Intel Dual-Core, 4GB RAM, 500GB hard drive, with Vista installed. Not to mention women love smaller systems, and college students love space-saving systems.

I have a similar system, and it's quite nice. 8)

NOTE ON HARD DRIVES: When it comes to video work, SATA/300 has reduced the necessity of having two drives to do your video work, especially when you have a lot of RAM to work with. I do a lot of special tasks that require two drives, but the implementation of SATA/300 has reduced this on other tasks, especially for editing. The speed increases to read/write from the same drive are not as large as some would think, especially not for standard definition video, on basic in/out from editing -- the CPU is still a larger bottleneck in most cases. Given the budget, I don't know that requiring two drives is a smart move.

Apple (Mac) lost the video professional about a decade ago. It makes for some nice niche systems, but that's about it. Many tasks are limited or outright impossible on OS X systems. The software isn't there -- Mac dumbed down long ago, trying to appeal to people with style over the actual productive usefulness. Instead of an advanced video editor, you have like crap like iMovie and iDVD. FCP, DVDSP and others are great -- but still limiting in various ways. Good maybe for an indy filmmaker with lots of cash to spare.

[pg55555]

Although I thanks all the advise, I feel that a recommendation that does not take into account the budget constrains is worthless:
- Intel i7
- Workstation
- Apple for running Final Cut Pro

I can tell you that I know how to spend $3,000 in a powerful computer. Actually it is very easy: just select the most expensive parts or select the most expensive pre-configured computer

The difficult task is to spend $500 / $600 wisely, getting the most powerful computer for your work, and trying to do the best trade-offs:
- An E7500 with a GTS 250 or an E8400 with a 9600 GT?
- Four cores running at 2.8 MHz or two cores at 3.16 MHz?
- An Intel platform based on the E7500 or an AMD based in the Phenom II 720

[edDV]

Although I thanks all the advise, I feel that a recommendation that does not take into account the budget constrains is worthless:
- Intel i7
- Workstation
- Apple for running Final Cut Pro

I can tell you that I know how to spend $3,000 in a powerful computer. Actually it is very easy: just select the most expensive parts or select the most expensive pre-configured computer

The difficult task is to spend $500 / $600 wisely, getting the most powerful computer for your work, and trying to do the best trade-offs:
- An E7500 with a GTS 250 or an E8400 with a 9600 GT?
- Four cores running at 2.8 MHz or two cores at 3.16 MHz?
- An Intel platform based on the E7500 or an AMD based in the Phenom II 720

An E8400 with a 9600 GT and 4GB RAM on a GigaByte EP45-UD3P is what I use for my main Vegas edit machine. Speed is adequate except could always use more CPU during encoding. I spent less than $400 upgrading from a Core2 Duo E6320 on ECS Mobo which was demoted to PVR edit duty.

You don't need to spend much. I usually spend more than average for tower cases and power supply so I can upgrade and mix match parts to keep up. I spend most on hard drives it seems.

[budz]

You can just buy a Q9400 for video encoding and a Gigabyte G31M-ES2L micro atx motherboard. The quad will keep her ahead of the game for about 2-3 years. Using the Gigabyte UD3P motherboard is basically for overclocking c2d or c2quad cpu's. IMHO a gaming video card would be a waste. Here's my suggestions:

Intel Q9400, $219.99 (FREE SHIPPING)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115131

Gigabyte G31M-ES2L motherboard, $52.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128357

GSkill 4gb (2x2gb) DDR2-800 Ram, $47.99 (FREE SHIPPING)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231122

Sapphire ATI HD 4650 Video card, $55.99, has HDMI via adapter
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102829

WD Black 500gb Sata hard drive, $69.99 (FREE SHIPPING)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136320

WD Black 80gb Sata hard drive, $35.99 (For operating system)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822135106

Antec Three Hundred Computer Case, $54.99 (FREE SHIPPING)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811129042

Corsair 450 watt power supply, (FREE SHIPPING)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139003

Subtotal = $612.38
UPS 3 day shipping = $13.77
Total = $626.15
Total after $15.00 mail in rebate = $611.15

Just my 2 cents!