Is a video card always necessary?

[vidds]

For editing non-hd video, is a video card necessary? how many mb? does it depend which program you're using?

[redwudz]

No. For SD video or even most HD video, the video card doesn't have much to do with editing. Some newer video cards have 'hardware acceleration' that can lower the CPU load for re-encoding, if that is part of your editing. If you don't need extensive editing, like just cut and paste editing, the video card doesn't have much of anything to do with it. Any editing that changes the framerate, the framesize, color, contrast, or most any other major changes require a re-encode. The downside is that re-encode also lowers quality.

[jagabo]

Without a video card you can't display anything at all. How are you going to edit video? I suppose what you mean is an add on graphics card verses integrated graphics. Most IGPs are pretty weak and don't support hardware video decoding or encoding. Some of the newest IGP's do.