What' the minimum spec requirement for pc to edit hd videos?

S

sohan_777

Hello guys,
I own a sony hdr cx 550v handycam and for editing I use sony vegas 10 and after effects. I'm still a newbie in editing so mostly the clips I'm working on are between 2-3 minutes. I work on a Dell Inspiron (dual core), 3gb ram and the gfx card is the one that's built in with the chipset.

As you all have guessed, this laptop won't be able to handle more than 10 mins of 1080p hd footage that are then edited using the various fx of ae and sv, let alone render them. I will be working on a 30 min long short film within the next two months and there's also a plan to make a feature film in the near future. So I've been thinking of getting a new system and it would help me a lot to know the lowest configuration (hence the least expensive) that would be able to handle the hd editing for a 120 minute length film. Please help me out on this. Also, note that the full length feature will have animations and lots of effects embedded on it.

There's another thing: a member of my crew has been bugging me; since power outage is a big issue in my country he thinks getting a laptop would be best idea. Do you think an alienware m17x or an asus g73w would solve my problem? Would they be a smart choice? I'm asking this 'cause I figured since I can manage up to 10 minutes with a dual core, will a core i-7 be really necessary with a 1.5gb video ram for editing a full length feature? Let me know what you guys think.
 
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I am working on a quadcore, don't know the exact name right now. For Sony Vegas, I use a script called "Proxy Stream". It converts the clips into lower quality/lower compression files (you can define the quality/compression), which are used for editing. When you want to render into full quality, it's only 3 clicks to change the clips on the timeline into the original ones.

This way you can use clips, that are not so power consuming, but render out full quality. Of course, rendering will still need time and I don't know if this script works with Vegas 10. And sure you need more harddisc space (original files + proxys). But it's worth a try, as the script is for free...
 
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brianluce said:
That computer will work if you're willing to transcode to Cineform files. You can edit Cineform on a iPhone.
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You are right, I totally forgot Cineform! Haven't tried it myself, but a lot people use it and are happy with it. You can try it and then buy it if you want. 129 US$ is not that much, if you compare it with a new PC or laptop.
 
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Cineform is a near lossless codec that will take your heavily compressed native files and make them bigger and make each frame discrete -- like film, so it requires very little computing power to edit. Only drawback is it makes your files bigger.
 
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Thanks for helping guys, I'm finally settling for a desktop after a month of research and getting a core-i7 with probably a radeon 6950. I haven't tried cineform yet, will definitely be looking into it.
 
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