# Is my build good for HD video editing?



## OzzmanFloyd120 (May 11, 2008)

This fall I'm going to be doing alot of HD video editing with Adobe Premiere and Avid Media Composer, also I'm going to be doing alot of stuff with Protools for school.
Is my PC going to be able to get me through with that in a timely fashion, or should I start looking for new parts in the summer?


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## kyle2020 (May 13, 2008)

*checks stats*
I really cant see any areas for improvement. apart from the fact that us unfortunate AMD lovers are getting kicked in the balls by intel atm. Their value - Performance ratio on the quad cores and faster dual cores is completely owning AMD currently. Thats the only suggestion, i might go to intel on my next upgrade myself.


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## echo75 (May 13, 2008)

your system is decently adequate for what you want to do, however like Kyle2020 if you want the best of the best ,intel at the monent is on tops and i havnt seen any sign yet that its changing in the immediate future but then who knows in the much longer run.


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## CrackerJack (May 13, 2008)

I do fine on a AMD system. Like i've said in another thread, i can do a HD video in 15min with my specs.  I'm planning on getting a phemon soon, they will help on alot. But i'm just wanting the phemon for benchmarks and games really.


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## kyle2020 (May 13, 2008)

CrackerJack said:


> I do fine on a AMD system. Like i've said in another thread, i can do a HD video in 15min with my specs.  I'm planning on getting a phemon soon, they will help on alot. But i'm just wanting the phemon for benchmarks and games really.



phenoms are quad core AMD's am i correct?


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## sneekypeet (May 13, 2008)

kyle2020 said:


> phenoms are quad core AMD's am i correct?



yes you are.


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## suraswami (May 13, 2008)

yes


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## suraswami (May 13, 2008)

OzzmanFloyd120 said:


> This fall I'm going to be doing alot of HD video editing with Adobe Premiere and Avid Media Composer, also I'm going to be doing alot of stuff with Protools for school.
> Is my PC going to be able to get me through with that in a timely fashion, or should I start looking for new parts in the summer?



With that Quad @2.6 you should be able to compile in a timely manner.  Don't know about Adobe Premiere if it can take advantage of more than 2 cores.  If so then it will be fast.


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## kyle2020 (May 13, 2008)

sneekypeet said:


> yes you are.



thanks haha, i guess ill have to have a comparison on the phenoms to the intel quad cores to look at for next year. joy.


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## jbunch07 (May 13, 2008)

i see nothing wrong with your system...your good to go!


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## farlex85 (May 13, 2008)

Yeah a quad-core intel would get the job done faster, but your phenom is as good as it gets for amd, and should be fine. After all you can still use your comp while your encoding.


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## kyle2020 (May 13, 2008)

evaluating on what farlex just said, crackerjack, how does your 5000+ BE overclock? my new motherboard arrives this week so ill finally get to tune it a bit, just wondering if 3.2 is the wall @ stable with it?


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## suraswami (May 13, 2008)

farlex85 said:


> Yeah a quad-core intel would get the job done faster, but your phenom is as good as it gets for amd, and should be fine. After all you can still use your comp while your encoding.
> 
> And CrackerJack let me know your secret. It takes me about 25min to analyze and encode a regular dvd much less an hd one, and my proc is faster clock for clock and oc higher, so........



It depends on the software you use.  I used Sony's Vegas encoding software.  Encoded about 60 minutes of home video and burn't to DVD in about 15 minutes on a 5600 OC'd to 6400 speeds.  The software used full 100% on both cores


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## farlex85 (May 13, 2008)

Yeah I guess I didn't think about that, good point. The one I use also compresses them to put on a dvd-r, sorry, I retract my previous statement.


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## CrackerJack (May 13, 2008)

yeah adobe is 100% of the cores, so make sure you have good cooling. I encode at 3.2ghz temps around 45 full load. There's no real no secret, you should always encode with same resolution as the orginal video.

ex.
1hr. 720x480 to 720x480= 10-15min.
1hr. 720x480 to 1920x1080= 2hrs.

when changing resolution is when is assume so much time. if the video is 1920x1080 (HD) to begin with then your looking at 25-30min encode time. Going from 720x480 to 1920x1080 you won't see much of a difference. you'll see a bigger difference if you record 1920x1080 to begin with.

This video was recorded in SD. I never re-encode it to a higher resolution, this is 720x480. But the adobe flash player is set much lower. 
http://www.performancebuildpc.com/SamplePage6_1280.html


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## niko084 (May 13, 2008)

Should work pretty well, I would have gone with an Intel Quad instead but thats me.
Also you may want to run the video stuff under XP, it will be quite a bit faster, even faster if you can get it running under linux 

My video encoding software encodes and transcodes about 3-4x faster under linux then xp.


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## CrackerJack (May 13, 2008)

I use Vista x64 x10 times better than XP Home and XP Pro x64. I saved almost 5min in Vista vs XP Pro x64.


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## niko084 (May 13, 2008)

CrackerJack said:


> I use Vista x64 x10 times better than XP Home and XP Pro x64. I saved almost 5min in Vista vs XP Pro x64.



Vista x64 I guess I could see that... x86 not a chance...
And linux x64 will eat the crap out of both, I can't even explain....


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## CrackerJack (May 13, 2008)

How did you get adobe to work with linux. It's Mac and Windows only


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## niko084 (May 13, 2008)

CrackerJack said:


> How did you get adobe to work with linux. It's Mac and Windows only



Not using adobe... So I can't say for that software in its own. But if it will run on a Mac, you can get it to run on linux probably fairly easily.

I figure linux is faster all around because it doesn't use ram or processor really and handles things differently, probably also faster under mac os then windows I would guess, nothing new there though.


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## CrackerJack (May 13, 2008)

niko084 said:


> probably also faster under mac os then windows I would guess, nothing new there though.



Yeah for now


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## niko084 (May 13, 2008)

CrackerJack said:


> Yeah for now



Windows 7 
ohh I just hope they do it as well as I hope they do!!!!!


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## CrackerJack (May 13, 2008)

niko084 said:


> Windows 7
> ohh I just hope they do it as well as I hope they do!!!!!



Wasn't talking about Windows 7. I was talking about CS4.


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## niko084 (May 13, 2008)

CrackerJack said:


> Wasn't talking about Windows 7. I was talking about CS4.



Aww... Well.... Maybe, but I doubt it simply because of the way windiws operates...


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## CrackerJack (May 13, 2008)

Well I just know for a fact that it will operate awhole lot better on Windows than Mac. he he


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## lemonadesoda (May 13, 2008)

If you want to do "HD video editting", then YES, you need to upgrade your system:

1./ The CPU is OK if you work in uncompressed video... and then only encode to HD compressed format after all editting is done.  You phenom is more than enough. UNLESS you were merging multiple video streams, in which case, you need an intel quad, or your system wont be able to process so much live data. Or, if you want to work directly with compressed video, you will need the intel quad, in fact, i would recommend a dual xeon for 8 cores if you want to *directly* edit compressed video formats.

2./ Your HDD is seriously underpowered and undersized.  I suggest you get an exclusive HDD for your video material... both source data, and edits. A samsung F1 750GB or 1GB is an excellent budget, high speed HDD.

3./ If you are going to do intensive editing, like post production of a movie, then a single HDD will not cut the mustard. You will need to set up a simple RAID 0 on SATA for a medium amount of video work, e.g. 2x Samsung F1, or a RAID 0 array on SCSI320 if you are doing intensive editing work, e.g. 2x or 4x SCSI320 @10K RPM. The controller and the HDD will be expensive. But less expensive that SDD. Actually, video editing on 2x SSD RAID is probably as good as 4xSCSI320. So check your budget. 1 drive, 2 drives + cheap controller, or 4 expensive drives and expensive controller.

>> Your bottleneck is the HDD

>> As you know, professional video editing is based on serious HDD RAID systems


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## OzzmanFloyd120 (May 13, 2008)

I don't think any of my projects for school will be more than 30 minutes. Right now a buddy of mine is using his WD 500GB External for all of his video storage and he actually has the same HD as me on his PC, he seems to be doing fine, but he's been downsampling all of his videos to 480i.
Really what we'll be doing is shooting in 1280p and then converting it after editing and post.
I guess I just want to save all my material in HD for the day I can afford a blu-ray burner.


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## CrackerJack (May 13, 2008)

OzzmanFloyd120 said:


> I don't think any of my projects for school will be more than 30 minutes. Right now a buddy of mine is using his WD 500GB External for all of his video storage and he actually has the same HD as me on his PC, he seems to be doing fine, but he's been downsampling all of his videos to 480i.
> Really what we'll be doing is shooting in 1280p and then converting it after editing and post.
> I guess I just want to save all my material in HD for the day I can afford a blu-ray burner.



what are format are you recording in?


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## lemonadesoda (May 14, 2008)

Given your project and budget, I would suggest getting the F1 SATA/300 drive and using it as your exclusive video drive. Do not use an external drive for storage. It is way too slow.





http://www.assimilateinc.com/tools1.html






Try comparing your existing 320GB drive to those figures.


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## Rurouni Strife (May 14, 2008)

Buy another Internal HDD.  Something in the range of...500 GB?  Video takes up a rediculus amount of space.  If your capturing in HD like resolutions, you are gonna definately want lots of space.  RAID might improve performance, but its up to you on how you wanna do that.  Personally, I dont want to mess with RAID drivers and setups, and I have 2 differing HD sizes too.  1 250 and 1 160.  One for 3D and school projects and games, one for music/movies.  My external is for backup.
Good Luck!


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## niko084 (May 14, 2008)

Using an internal decently fast hard drive is a good idea, but with a no offense slow machine, its not worth the raid. If you were running dual Xeon quads or something it would be a different story.

By the way I don't mean your machine is slow, but its too slow to really gain off a really fast raid 0 setup. A single fast dedicated drive wouldn't be a bad idea though.


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