Good computer for video editing.

[jct]

I a going to buy a new computer for video editing. I plan on spending around $3000 or less. I am looking at a Compaq Presario 8000 Pentium 4 with 512mb of SDRAM with a 80 gig hard drive and a DVD/R/RW & CD-RW Combo Drive W/One Media. Also wi Microsoft XP Home operating system, Sound Blaster Live 5.1, 64 MB SDR NVidia GeForce2 MX with TV-Out. Is this a good system or can someone suggest a better system for about the same price. I video games and events with a digital camcorder and I want to save them on DVD. Thanks for any suggestions.

[d4n13l]

What about dual AMD (with CL2 DDR) under XP Pro?
Also, have you thought of using two 40Gb HDD's ran as RAID 0? You dont lose any storage space and its faster than just one 80Gb drive.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: d4n13l on 2001-10-06 09:15:13 ]</font>

[KingJohn]

I just built a supercomputer

Motherboard
http://channel.intel.com/business/ibp/boards/d845hv_d845wn.htm

Chip
Pentium 4, 1.6

Hard drives
40Gb 7200 IBM Deskstar
20Gb 7200 IBM Deskstar
http://www.storage.ibm.com/hdd/prod/ds60gxpdata.htm

256Mb sdram (Its so cheap and just as good as the new type)

Cost of above
£144 Motherboard
£154 Chip
£114 60gb drive
£88 20gb drive
£25 256Mb ram
£30 case/ power supply

£555 $888

Monitor, keyboard, cdrom/writer I had, but you could build a supercomputer twice with $3000 !!

Now when I use TMPGEnc to convert from AVI to VCD.mpeg it asks how many copies at once do you want

[septor]

You'll get better performance if you go the amd xp route dual cpus @ 1.5 up to 1.8

[p®è§+ïgé]

Basically for a home video editing computer (by "home", I mean non-professional level), there are 2 aspects that are pivitol in the purchase of your system. One is CPU speed and the other is hard drive speed. One aspect of the Presario 8000 series that I would consider somewhat of a drawback is its use of SDRAM. I would suggest at least a DDR system for video editing - the benefits far outweigh the costs. For $3000 you can get much more than the base system. A RAID array or even a SCSI hard drive would be VERY useful. As for a CPU, you should get the fastest you can afford. The rest of your system isn't too much of a factor for video editing.

[nightwing7]

DO NOT BUY A COMPAQ, IT IS A PIECE OF CRAP!!!!!!!


If you want a good machine that is fast get an independent or a Dell, they rock,

get a P4 2.0GHZ ( an AMD cpu would be better but u usually dun get em with DEll), with 512 RDRAM, Geforce 3 or radeon 2, a 7200RPM HD (try IBM deskstar or quantum fireball)

just dun get compaq, u cant upgrade them, and they give u a hard time, take from a hardware guy

[nfl2k2]

Stay away from Compaq, HP, Sony, Dell, and Gateway. Instead, build your own, or get a Falcon X, Alienware, or Hypersonic if you're not building your own.

[RaleighNC]

For 3grand I would build two or three computers.

One fast enuf for capturing.
One for editing.
One for editing or gaming or surfing or anything.
Three small hds for the OS.
Three larger hds for pull-out drives.
A dvd
A writer
One monitor
A good KVM.

[d4n13l]

jct, it would be better to build your own if you feel up to it. Go for EIDE RAID 0 and dual CPU (or the fastest P4).
OR...
What about a MAC? They are serious media machines. A little over priced maybe, but Apple MACs are very good at video editing - Especially the Power MACs. Now, I am no MAC fan (PCs are my thing), but dont rule one out. Ignore what (PC) people will have to say about MACs - they probably have never used one. I would suggest to go to your nearest Apple dealer and try one out. You never know until you try...

[rasch]

Compaq bites! Don't buy 'stock' machines for high end use.

For $3000 (american dollars) I would suggest a system with SCSI devices:

Tyan Thunder dual K7 board: $499
(includes 2 SCSI160 channels, 2 Ethernet, and cheap video card.)
2 1.2Gig Athlon MP procs: $378 (189 each)
1Gig PC2100 Registered RAM: $378 (189 each, 512meg DIMM)
ATI Radeon 32meg X4AGP $268
IBM 20Gig IDE ata/100 $89 *Use for Operating system
IBM 18.3GB/10,000rpm Ultra 160 SCSI $185 *Use for vids you are working on.
IBM 75GB/7200rpm Ultra ATA/100 $259 *use to store completed vids
Yamaha 20X10X40 Ultra SCSI Internal CD-RW $289
Adaptec FireConnect 4300 FireWire $72
Creative Labs Sound Blaster Audigy Platinum EX $230
Case, floppy, keyboard, mouse $150
KDS Visual Sensations 17" monitor $169

This all comes to $2966

I got the price quotes from http://www.dirtcheapdrives.com

This is what I have on the planning board

[rasch]

Regarding the new Macs:

For those of you who are familiar with Linux ...

Mac OS10 is FreeBSD with an X server on it!!! Notice how "X" has snuck into the Mac terminology ... I'm keeping my eye on Mac big time. With FreeBSD and Mac developing software (Especially video related) I may convert!

[d4n13l]

rasch,
Why not IDE RAID? You could just use 2 40GB IBM drives in RAID 0, giving you 80Gb in total (Or 2 x 60GB giving 120GB). Then the money you save on SCSI could be spent on faster CPUs. The money would be better spent on faster CPUs and a RAID array for a user like this. If the budget was higher only then would I consider SCSI as a viable option.

Also, Linus Torvalds slated the new MAC OS as "a peice of crap", he also said a lot more. Apple asked for his help in developing it but he refused. From what else Ive heard of it though it is an excellent OS - Just not up to Torvalds' standards though, hehe.

[rasch]

Well d4n13l,

This is the fastest machine, cpu wise, you can put together without going server class hardware with maybe quad cpu's.

The Athlon MP only goes up to 1.2G I believe, and I don't think there are multi-proc P4 boards out there yet. A P4 1.6Ghz is going to be much slower than two K7 1.2's. Any P3 over 800Mhz or so is using SpeedStep technology ... which is just a lame version of manufacturer overclocking that actually kinda sucks. P3's are not the way to go for a new machine. CPU generation is more important than Mhz.

Why not RAID IDE? SCSI is faster and more reliable. You get a better quality throughput with SCSI, which is why the working drive and the CD-RW are both SCSI. A 10K RPM SCSI160 drive is much faster than an ata/100 IDE RAID setup too. IDE is cheaper, true, but it's still not as solid as SCSI. Besides, you only really need the coolio-speed for _making_ the vids. Get a truck load of IDE for long term storage and viewing.

If your more concerned about drive space, go with an IDE RAID like I currently have. But if you want to tweek your performance to the max, go with SCSI. SCSI should'a been the standard instead of IDE ... but the general consumer wanted a cheaper solution. You can even get 15K RPM SCSI drives. I think Seagate is the only one out there now ... 18Gig Cheetah drive.

If one does go with a system like I spec'ed out you may consider spending a little more to get higher quality cooling. Check out:

http://www.thinkgeek.com/stuff/computing/pc-mods.shtml

HDD coolers, RAM coolers, rounded cables (for decreased airfloe resistance), jetcool cpu fans and cpu shims. Spend about $80 on some cooling tech.

Where did you read about Linus Torvalds commenting on Mac OS10? I'd like to read that!

ANOTHER INTERSTING TID-BIT:

With today's 266 FSB motherboards it's been shown that PC133 memory is actually faster than PC2100 RAM, functionally. Why? It seems that the memory 133 and FSB 266 stepping (133 X 2 = 266) is a better match for throughput. Go figure.

[d4n13l]

I can see where you are coming from about the SCSI. It is my sub system of choice any day.
I would be inclined to recommend an IDE RAID 0 array and a single SCSI disk. Its just that you suggested 2 IDE disks with different capacities (a 20Gb and a 75Gb). I would have thought it wiser to use two 40Gb (or 60Gb) drives as RAID 0, as well as a SCSI disk. RAID 0 is mathematically more suseptable to errors, but in reality it is still only a slim chance that it fail.
I am not quick to recommend SCSI to most people - I suppose that SCSI in the US isnt as much as it is here in the UK.
I only didnt recommend SCSI as it is a post in the Newbie forum: So I just presumed that SCSI isnt really viable for this guy.

Oh, the bit about the MAC OS...
I think that I read it either on tomshardware site or in an issue of PCW (a PC magazine here in the UK).

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: d4n13l on 2001-10-08 11:46:59 ]</font>

[colin@60n]

Well I read a lot of good stuff here, and some great spec machines are being talked up - but does the guy really need the performance (and cost) of some of the systems listed?

As I understand it an uncompressed full frame video stream with audio has a data rate of around 20Mb/sec. A pair of IBM 75 or 60GXP's in a RAID 0 set up can easly match that, damn they can nearly do it individually, and I'm sure other companies hd's can do as well! IDE drives come in bigger sizes and the drives are a LOT cheaper.

AS for CD-R, why scsi any more? It's a lot more expensive and any modern hard drive can keep up with the latest 16x burn speed models. Mind you that burn rate is academic in any event 'cause most DVD's seem to have problems reading the latest disks burnt at the highest speed settings.

AS for processor power - take the advice and get as much as possible, but if a lot of your editing is transitions, fades etc, and you aren't going to be doing a lot of cropping or frame resizing, then consider a hardware card such as the Matrox RT2500 (less than £1000) to save processor time.

Just my t'uppence worth

BTW I just specced up a full computer for video editing, inc monitor keyboard etc, and it came out at around £2500. Could get faster for a little more cash but then you don't get certified compatible hardware!