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Editing machine

Hi. I'm new to this, in every possible sense so I'm just gonna get right to it and you can laugh later. I have about 20 hours worth of digital footage (mini DV) on a variety of topics and I need a computer o edit it on. A friend of mine knows how to get me good deals on all the parts I'll need and he can snap it all together like it was lego... BUT I don't have a clue what hard ware I need.
Basically what I'm looking for, from any kind person out there, is to fill in the following blanks.

PROCESSOR:
HARD DRIVE:
RAM:
VIDEO CARD:
SOUND CARD:
MOTHER BOARD:

I don't need anything too fancy. Just reliable hardware that could run some recent software. I'm sure almost everyone goes the digital rout by now so if something has worked for you please let me know. Thank you.
(My apologies if this question is better suited for the DV section. I thought long and hard about it)
 
You'll want lots and lots of RAM. No less than 1 gig of it. 2 gigs will put a smile on your face.

You can get by with a 1ghz processor... but that's the minimum. It's not that expensive to get a 2ghz or greater one, these days... and the faster it is, the faster the video will "render" when it's time. Try to get the fastest one you can, but if you need to keep within a budget just make sure it's no less than 1.

Harddrives are very important. It needs to have 7200 RPM or greater. If you get a slower one (often in laptops) of 5400 RPM or 4800 RPM, you will suffer from "dropped frames" when trying to import fullsize video.

Ideally you should have two (or more) harddrives, as well. The first one to run Windows, your editing software and whatever other stuff you have going... and the second one to save the video files to. It is possible to do it all on a single drive, but performance will suffer and you may drop frames too, when that harddrive needle-thing is jumping all over the place.

Video files are huuuge, btw. Each hour of DV will take up 13 gigs of space. So get a massive external drive. You can get 200 gig drives relatively cheaply. I've seen 400 gig ones, but they are a bit pricier.

Not only will the original DV take up space, but when you are assembling the project you'll be creating temp-files for the project that are also big. Get the biggest drive you can afford. :)

Motherboard? No idea. I suppose you just need to check that motherboard supports the type (and speed) of whatever CPU you decide to get.

Sound card? I just use the onboard whatever that came with this. I suppose there are good ones to pick, especially if you want to mess around with 5.1

The bigger issue would be the actual speakers used. Computer speakers sound very different from what regular ones sound like. I forget the name of the recommended speakers to get. (I use headphones, personally)

Video card... eh. Make sure you have a decent monitor first... one that's not blurry, and not teeny. You'll need lots of screen to work on, unless you're a masochist.

Oh, and hello! :cool:
 
Yeah.... what zen said
(like the new avatar by the way..... is there something you'ld like to share with the group :secret: )

One thing I would add go with multiple hardrives in a Raid configuration. More memory for less $$$ and if you go with stripping (RAID 0, I think) instead of mirroring (RAID 1) you will also increase your read/write time. Helps reduce the pesky frame dropping thing.

At least that is what was explained to me.
 
Mikey D said:
One thing I would add go with multiple hardrives in a Raid configuration. More memory for less $$$ and if you go with stripping (RAID 0, I think) instead of mirroring (RAID 1) you will also increase your read/write time. Helps reduce the pesky frame dropping thing.

At least that is what was explained to me.

The big diff between RAID 0 and RAID 1 is that the stiping is faster and you get lots of storage space, so if you have 2 200 gig drives (though they appear to be a single drive) you now have 400 gigs of storage. In a RAID 1, or mirrored drive, information is written to both drives at the same time. It's real-time back up but not as fast. I like the RAID 0 for performance but make sure you have a way to back up your data. As somone who has lost time and had to redo some ADR because of hard drive failure, I can promise you a back up is the most important thing in the world when you need it. And I do back up pretty well but in with real time redundancy, you are not out of a single second of time.

Look for a mb with Serial ATA RAID onboard, it's pretty common nowadays. So instead of using the old IDE drives, you can set up a RAID without having the old-fashioned, expensive SCSI drives. You can even have your OS on a IDE drive, it's the storage and writing to the data disk where SCSI really pays off. And it's been mentioned elsewhere but you do want a drive for you OS and programs, the C drive of just about any size over 60gig depending on what progs you install, and as much data storage as you can afford.



As for frame dropping during the render, I haven't had any problems with a hardware-base card and and old 7200 rpm disk. My impression is that the new hardware is just so fast and space so huge that it's less of an issue; does anyone else have problems with dropping frames?
 
My recommendation is, if this is a PC, buy a system that is pre-built for editing specifically. If you go the "build it yourself" route you are bound to encounter problems down the road usually due to compatibility issues.

But if you insist on building your own machine then I echo ZenSteve and RRK1962.
 
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