HD editing on PC

Cracker Funk

Cracker Funk

I don't understand what's gone wrong. I hope someone can point me in the right direction. I had a monster of a PC built for me. Huge hard drive, fast processors, good motherboard, decent video card, and of course shit-tons of memory. It edits like a breeze.

That is, with my standard DV video, from my miniDV camera. But when I tried to upload HD video, shot on a friend's Canon 5D, my software froze up. Becomes completely unfunctional.

I'm using Avid Liquid 7.2. It's beautiful software, and I'm sad that they've chosen to discontinue it. And it's supposed to be just fine with HDV. For shits and giggles, I downloaded a trial version of Sony Vegas, and it had no problem at all, processing the HD video. So, it's not my computer. I've got some sort of weird compatibility issue.

Any thoughts? Anybody have a favorite PC software for editing HD?

P.S. To all you Mac-heads out there, let me save you the time. Yeah, we know this is why you bought a Mac. Keep your smirking to yourself, Mr. Moneybags.
 
Sort by date Sort by votes
The 5D records to a proprietary codec, right?

Vegas is designed with all HD formats in mind, so it doesn't surprise me that it worked better on that. But HD footage is really cumbersome to edit on any platform, no matter how huge your processor is. It'll probably eventually bog down in Vegas as well.

You would probably have better luck using an intermediary codec like Cineform's Neoscene. The new version specifically mentions the 5D. Check them out:

http://www.cineform.com/neoscene/
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Yeah, the codec for the DSLR's is pretty new, so it's not as easy to edit with it in older software that can't interpret the video/audio.

CINEFORM is a great way to work with the footage, but that means Avid Liquid is out of the picture I believe...
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
sonnyboo said:
Yeah, the codec for the DSLR's is pretty new, so it's not as easy to edit with it in older software that can't interpret the video/audio.

CINEFORM is a great way to work with the footage, but that means Avid Liquid is out of the picture I believe...
Click to expand...

Looks like you're correct. I'm going to call the Avid support line to see if they have a solution. It sounds like I'm probably going to have to switch over to Media Composer, and use CINEFORM. This could end up being a good deal for me. I purchased a legit copy of Liquid way below cost, presumably because people knew the software was on it's way out. I got it for $200. Since it's being discontinued, Avid is offering an upgrade to Media Composer to all registered Liquid users for $500. So that means I'd get a legit copy of Media Composer, a $2,200 software, for a total of $700. Not a bad deal; I just wasn't planning on spending that.

Thank you both for the help.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
I have an 8 core HP z800 with 12 gbt of ram, a 4 tb g-tec external raid drive, an aja card for playback and a matrox 4800 for h.264 exceleration. I use 2 Canon XH A1s and a Canon 5d Mark II and most of my projects run from 3 to 20 or 30 minutes with absolutely no problem. I'm doing all of my editing using Adobe premiere pro CS4. I am going to kick up to CS5 in a few weeks. I use a totally tapeless workflow. Hope some of this helps. ~ Frank
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
I'm doing editing of my D5000 HD with Adobe Premiere CS4 and it works fantastic without any trouble even my machine is quad core 2.3 and only 4GB RAM with 9800 1GB nvidia graphic card only 24" view sonic monitor that doesn't matter

I think you must try premiere CS4 or CS5 once hopefully it will short out your issue. let me know the result pls
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Edius edits T2i files, without any conversion (conversion which is eating up your hard drive). I've been running it the last few days without any hitches. We'll see how it works out in the long-run.

The full version runs in the ballpark of Premeire, but the lite version (Neo 2) is less than $200, and as far as lite versions go, it's pretty useful.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
I edited some 7D and T2i footage this week in Adobe CS4 (with the 4.2.1 upgrade) and it worked pretty easily. No hang ups or problems at all. That wasn't even with Cineform in the mix either, straight up MOV files.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
final cut has some trouble with my 7d footage, it drops a lot of frames on playback but that should go away when it is converted into a .mov. but macs have a bug or two with the dslr footage as well your not alone lol
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Quick answer: $800.

I've got dual-core Athlon 3-something Gig processor.
3 Gigs RAM
1 TB HD
mediocre video card
ASUS motherboard, on-board audio
Came shipped without any operating system

I bought it from this place: http://www.cyberpowerpc.com/

They specialize in gaming computers, but in general, their prices are pretty low (as far as I can tell).

They are not perfect. Every now and then, my computer doesn't boot properly, and does weird stuff with on the monitor, before I manually shut down and restart, and then everything is fine. My best guess is that I've got some kind of driver incompatibility issue between video card, mother board and operating system. I think I'm planning to upgrade to the latest Windows (I'm currently on XP), and I will probably replace the video card; I'm hoping that will solve the problem.

What I like about this place is three things:

1. Price is good
2. It doesn't come loaded with a bunch of crap that you don't want that's just going to slow down your computer.
3. Their customer technical-support is lifetime on all their products. They have limited hours, but no matter what your problem, you can call them and work it out.

Have you ever messed with computer components yourself? It's actually quite easy. They kinda just fit together. The difficult part is in knowing what to purchase and what is compatible with what. If you feel comfortable doing the research, the actual construction is a breeze.

But that's IF you want to construct your dream computer. If you want someone else to do it, the amount they charge you is not much more than you would spend doing it yourself.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
DeltaOmegaPro said:
Quick question Cracker Funk: How much did it cost to have your own computer built? I'm just curious and have been thinnking about doing it myself.
Click to expand...
I have some budget PC builds put together, if you're up for the task of assembling it yourself. Most of them are around the $600-800 range, but they're beefy enough to easily handle HD editing.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top