Which computer?

[Caridwen]

I know this has been asked a thousand times so I apologise.

I've never edited a film before and know very little about computers. This is all I know:

I need a lot of space.

I'm on a very limited budget and cannot afford a Mac. I've seen reasonably priced Pentium 4 Dells which fit my budget. I know I can get a separate harddrive to store the film as I film and I know I need a DVD burner.

What else do I need to look for when buying a computer?

I obviously need to save my film from tape, and I need to view the film as I film so I need a large monitor - how large? I'm obviously filming on digital...

Any help would be much appreciated

 

[Zensteve]

Speed of the external hard-drive should be 7200rpm (minimum), for plain video. Slower ones drop a lot of frames, while importing.

You need lots of RAM. Squeeze in as much as possible, that your motherboard & operating system can handle. (though 2 gigs is good enough, really, if just using the Windows Movie Maker.)

If you've never edited before (and with little computer experience), don't bother buying any fancy editing software (yet). You should have a free Microsoft Movie Maker editing software programme on your new computer (it's included with Windows). Sure, it's fairly simple... but you'll be able to do a lot with it, including burn to DVD. Practise on that for a while - the concepts are just the same on other expensive software.

If you really get a groove on while editing, then maybe consider looking at other options/software.

 

[Caridwen]

Speed of the external hard-drive should be 7200rpm (minimum), for plain video. Slower ones drop a lot of frames, while importing.

You need lots of RAM. Squeeze in as much as possible, that your motherboard & operating system can handle. (though 2 gigs is good enough, really, if just using the Windows Movie Maker.)

If you've never edited before (and with little computer experience), don't bother buying any fancy editing software (yet). You should have a free Microsoft Movie Maker editing software programme on your new computer (it's included with Windows). Sure, it's fairly simple... but you'll be able to do a lot with it, including burn to DVD. Practise on that for a while - the concepts are just the same on other expensive software.

If you really get a groove on while editing, then maybe consider looking at other options/software.

Thanks for your help. This is incredible useful stuff and your time is appreciated.

 

[Thom 98]

For normal SD (meaning stanard definition), a regular PC for around 300-400$ is everything you need. They mostly come with 2 gigs of ram, a dual core CPU and at least a 500GB hdd. As Zensteve said, Windows movie maker is a good program to start with, however as you become more advanced you really should look out for a new program. There're some good beginners-programs for around 120$ (used even cheaper).