CPU speeds needed for editing

[ShBm]

I'm trying to get into video editing. I've done stuff at school and all that. I plan on buying Ulead MediaStudio 8 (that's what I know how to use, is there something better?). Do CPU speeds matter much in video editing? What will I need if I want it to run smoothly and quickly? Also, will 1gb of ram be enough to speed things up (the computers at school took forever to render and such I want this tobe FAST).

[kschang]

As fast as possible, and as much RAM as you can afford, AND a very fast HD (RAID would be even better)

[ZippyP.]

CPU speed is more important than RAM. 512 MB minimum ram, CPU as fast as you can afford.

[gadgetguy]

The CPU speed is the most important hardware measure you can take to increase encoder times. Most encoders don't utilyze that much memory so anywhere between 512 to 1 gig should be plenty of memory. Modern hard drives are all fast enough to keep up with the processing speed so with hard drive size is more important that read/write speed. There is no speed advantage to using RAID, but for reliability and recoverablility there may be. Separate hard drives for OS, Source, and encode Destination can decrease encoding time as well.

Software wise you want to keep it as streamline as possible. If possible have only the OS and encoder running.

[edDV]

Do CPU speeds matter much in video editing? What will I need if I want it to run smoothly and quickly? Also, will 1gb of ram be enough to speed things up (the computers at school took forever to render and such I want this tobe FAST).

CPU Speed means everthing for editing, effects and encoding so long as you have at least 512MB RAM (1GB better if you will be running multiple apps).

What you want is 10-100x the speed to the fastest CPU available. In the meantime we wait for the render to finish.

Some tips.
- Raw editing goes much faster with uncompressed or DV format project settings.
- Using the same format for project settings as source file will eliminate the need to convert (aka "conform") the source file.
- If you use a separate encoder, consider file serving to save a render step.

[ShBm]

I did some research. The computer I had been doing editing on had a Pentium 4 2.93GHz CPU.

Will a Pentium D 3GHz be much better than that, or will I have to go up to 3.2GHz ($200 more) to see a big difference?

[ZippyP.]

Do the math, 2.9 to 3.2 is only a 10% improvement. Only you can decide if it is worth it.

[edDV]

+10% CPU may mean a MPeg2 calc could save 15-20 minutes off a 3hr encode. Down in the noise.

[ShBm]

What do I need to get the program to run smoothy? The old computers lagged and froze, especially with a lot of picture-in-picture work I was trying. I don't caretoo much about rendering as much as just program performance.

[edDV]

What do I need to get the program to run smoothy? The old computers lagged and froze, especially with a lot of picture-in-picture work I was trying. I don't caretoo much about rendering as much as just program performance.

Picture in picture is all about CPU computation (aka effects rendering). The only way to speed that up is to invest in serious hardware (e.g. entry point http://www.videoguys.com/rtx100.html or other hardware at that site) or a render farm.

Also, programs like Vegas and Premiere Pro will be much better for those types of effects. They use preview renders to make the effects construction go quickly but the render of the actual effect will take many minutes to hours.

[ShBm]

Is video editing on a notebook possible/plausible?

[edDV]

Is video editing on a notebook possible/plausible?

Sure, you adapt what you do to the speed of your machine. Modern P4 level laptops are fine for capture, OK for CPU power but suffer limited internal disk capacity.

External drives are the norm.

The main desktop advantage is ability to use multiple disk controllers on the PCI bus. This runs rings around external firewire or USB2 disk control.

Of course hardware acceleration add-ins only work with desktops. This will become a requirement for serious MPeg4 (h.264, VC-1, etc.)encoding , HDTV editing or HDTV HTPC.

[jagabo]

Do the math, 2.9 to 3.2 is only a 10% improvement. Only you can decide if it is worth it.

But he's comparing a Pentium 4 (single core) to a Pentium D (dual core). Depending on the encoder there could be a big difference in performance. TMPGEnc for example is nearly twice as fast on my Athlon 64 X2 3800+ when using both cores rather than just one. On the other hand, Xvid encoding with VirtualDub is about the same speed.

[ZippyP.]

But he's comparing a Pentium 4 (single core) to a Pentium D (dual core). Depending on the encoder there could be a big difference in performance.

So moving from P4 to Pentium D (dual core) can be a big improvement (depending on the software taking advantage it) but moving from a 3 GHz D to a 3.2 GHz D will give only a minor improvement.

Yes?

[jagabo]

But he's comparing a Pentium 4 (single core) to a Pentium D (dual core). Depending on the encoder there could be a big difference in performance.

So moving from P4 to Pentium D (dual core) can be a big improvement (depending on the software taking advantage it) but moving from a 3 GHz D to a 3.2 GHz D will give only a minor improvement.

Yes?

Yes.

[edDV]

But he's comparing a Pentium 4 (single core) to a Pentium D (dual core). Depending on the encoder there could be a big difference in performance.

So moving from P4 to Pentium D (dual core) can be a big improvement (depending on the software taking advantage it) but moving from a 3 GHz D to a 3.2 GHz D will give only a minor improvement.

Yes?

Yes.

A "big" improvement like a few minutes off a 3 hour encode. Quad core will be out later this year. That is beginning to speak to me but 10x+ speed is what is really needed.

[greymalkin]

so if you have the a pentiumD 3.0ghz desktop system with 512mb ram as your profile suggests then you might want to go ahead and get another 512mb ram and a second BIG hard drive. Assuming your first hard drive is fairly large since you seem to have a pretty recent computer.

I would not suggest a laptop for video editing as they have slower hard drives and the ones that aren't optimized for battery life (the faster ones) will not last long at all if they aren't tethered to a power source...on top of that you will have to have a secondary hard drive.

Even with a good fast computer video editing/encoding takes time. Unless you are richie rich and can buy a render farm you are going to have to wait..sometimes a few hours depending on how many changes you have made to the source. Which works out because lucky for us although we have to sleep 8 hours a day, our computers do not. Most of my rendering/encoding occurs between midnight and 8am

[jagabo]

But he's comparing a Pentium 4 (single core) to a Pentium D (dual core). Depending on the encoder there could be a big difference in performance.

So moving from P4 to Pentium D (dual core) can be a big improvement (depending on the software taking advantage it) but moving from a 3 GHz D to a 3.2 GHz D will give only a minor improvement.

Yes?

Yes.

A "big" improvement like a few minutes off a 3 hour encode. Quad core will be out later this year. That is beginning to speak to me but 10x+ speed is what is really needed.

No, like I said, with my Athlon 64 X2, conversions with TMPGEnc are nearly twice as fast with two cores. So your 3 hour encode would be done in a little over 1.5 hours. I consider that more than a "few minutes".

Even without software that's multithreaded you may be able to render much faster -- just run two instances of the encoder at the same time. With VirtualDub and Xvid I can encode two videos in nearly the same amount of time as one by running two instances of VirtualDub.

The Pentium D is more contrained by its FSB so the benifit of dual core isn't quite as large.

[edDV]

Multi-core is an exciting development. The cost to the chip manufacturer scales at a fraction of the CPU power multiply assuming the OS and applications adequately support multiple processors. They also seem to have the heat issues under control. The roadmap is for 4 core, then 8 and 16. All this is most welcome.

I think consumer HDTV will quickly move to MPeg4 (skiping over MPeg2 HDV). The key to making that work is hardware decoding support in the GPU (display card) and encoding support in either the tuner or advanced display card.

Video effects processing software (e.g. Premiere Pro 2.0) are starting to take full advantage of the hardware functions (via DirectX) that are present on advanced GPU, tuner and other cards. So we have two trends to follow: multicore processors and hardware acceleration.

MPeg4 encoding will soon be a hardware function set under DirectX and won't use the CPU at all, or lightly. When that happens we will need to balance our upgrade budget among CPU and hardware acceleration alternatives.