Upgrading...Video editing; CPU, GPU, SSD/NVMe , Memory; how important is each one?

[videobruce]

I'm going with AMD system running W10, it's up in the air if it will be a AM4 or AM5 MB, cost being somewhat a issue. I realize AM5 overall is faster. The level is 'mid-end'. I'm not talking about state of the art here and I have NO interest in Gaming.

My question is, my current system (2016) is a dog when it comes to editing. With 1080p mp4 recordings for example, It basically takes half the time of the recording length to process the edited video. (IOW's a 1 hour clip takes 30 minutes to process). I assume those 4 items in the title are important, but are they equal AFA speed?

Specifically; doesn't the Video card do most of the processing vs the CPU? I understand it also depends on the software that is used.
Also, the storage devices; I know HDD's are slow, but if I only use a SATA SSD vs using a PCIe NVMe how does that affect the choices for the Processor & Video card & memory?

The software is usually; Movavi Video Editor Plus v15

IOW's what is the weakest link in the chain? Any questions, please ask.

 

[Dr. Dro]

How much are you willing to spend, and what components do you want to reuse from your current build? With the reminder that the motherboard and RAM cannot be reused from an AMD FX build. You rejected the advice given on the thread earlier this week and claimed that the $1K full rebuild I suggested was "too expensive", so please be very specific on your budgetary constraint.

 

[videobruce]

BTW, none of this is BluRay material, 2GB size would probably be the largest.

 

[TheLostSwede]

The obvious advantage of AM5 is longevity, as AM4 is most likely close to coming to an end as far as any potential upgrade options goes.

As for the graphics card, yes, it can accelerate video encoding and you can for example find a list of what Nvidia's card can or can't do at the link below.

Video Encode and Decode GPU Support Matrix

Find the related video encoding and decoding support for all NVIDIA GPU products.

developer.nvidia.com

Also check what features can be offloaded to the GPU in the software you use, as this varies.

There are obvious advantage to NVMe over SATA when you import media, but at least the tests TPU does for SSDs, might not reflect what you do and shouldn't be a deal breaker. However, it might be hard to get hold of a SATA SSD today and the price difference isn't huge, but you can obviously move the drives you already have, over to you new system.

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www.techpowerup.com

Make sure you get plenty of RAM, ideally 32 GB or more.

 

[Chrispy_]

Run task manager's performance tab to work out what your resource bottlenecks are when encoding.

Whether the encode is disk/cpu/gpu-limited depends on the format of your original footage, and largely on which encoder and software you're using. NVENC makes the most sense as it's likely to be the fastest with any half-recent Nvidia GPU, but for any given quality of encode, the filesize is higher than the best options. If you are aiming for the smallest possible files from your encodes at any given image quality, you'll need to use CPU encoding on a slower preset, ideally two-pass and that's going to benefit mostly from as many cores as you can throw at it.

How efficiently the codec can compress the data really is down to how much hardware you want to throw at it. An old Ryzen 5 3600 can rapidly encode stuff if you just want to use a quick preset that isn't aiming to use every trick in the codec's dictionary to maximise image quality per bitrate.

 

[QuietBob]

The software is usually; Movavi Video Editor Plus v15

This is an old version which does not support the NVENC hardware encoder found in contemporary Nvidia GPUs:

That means that the video card will go unused, and the whole processing will be done on the CPU alone. You'd need to upgrade to a newer version of the suite (and possibly a newer video card) to take advantage of GPU hardware encoding. Utilizing it will typically result in much faster rendering of the output file.

 

[videobruce]

I was planning on 32GB.
Shrinking the size isn't the issue, again none of this are BD's.
I know Movavi a older version, but I didn't see any improvement (in my present system). Actually their GUI is worse.
Does their 2020 version fit the bill? I expect to use a AMD video card.

 

[bug]

I'm going with AMD system running W10, it's up in the air if it will be a AM4 or AM5 MB, cost being somewhat a issue. I realize AM5 overall is faster. The level is 'mid-end'. I'm not talking about state of the art here and I have NO interest in Gaming.

My question is, my current system (2016) is a dog when it comes to editing. With 1080p mp4 recordings for example, It basically takes half the time of the recording length to process the edited video. (IOW's a 1 hour clip takes 30 minutes to process). I assume those 4 items in the title are important, but are they equal AFA speed?

Specifically; doesn't the Video card do most of the processing vs the CPU? I understand it also depends on the software that is used.
Also, the storage devices; I know HDD's are slow, but if I only use a SATA SSD vs using a PCIe NVMe how does that affect the choices for the Processor & Video card & memory?

The software is usually; Movavi Video Editor Plus v15

IOW's what is the weakest link in the chain? Any questions, please ask.

You can probably answer most of these yourself. Just watch usage, see what's being used 100%. That's your bottleneck.
RAM doesn't seem to be a deciding factor (https://www.techpowerup.com/review/ddr5-memory-performance-scaling-with-amd-zen-5/9.html) and as long as you're on a SSD, it doesn't need to be very fast, all of them will have enough sequential speeds to handle reading and writing video.
But you will need to check whether the software you use is CPU or GPU limited. Keep in mind that if it's using both the CPU and the GPU, and the bottleneck is the CPU, installing a faster CPU may move the bottleneck to the video card (no danger of that if the GPU seeing under 50% usage though).

 

[TheLostSwede]

I expect to use a AMD video card.

Do keep in mind that AMD graphics cards don't tend to be as well supported when it comes to GPU offloading for various tasks, as Nvidia cards are.

 

[videobruce]

I had issues with Nvidia driver packages of late. They decided to throw in a number of .exe files that had nothing to do with the actual drivers in the 'Driver' folder. I always use DM to load/update drivers and by pointing DM to their 'Driver' folder it also installed their over bloated tweaking program which I have zero use for. Beside I understand Nvidia cars are very pricey of late from others comments.
But, I guess I will have to add that consideration into my getting longer list of research.

 

[QuietBob]

I know Movavi a older version, but I didn't see any improvement (in my present system). Actually their GUI is worse.
Does their 2020 version fit the bill? I expect to use a AMD video card.

Any version newer than 15 supports NVENC (Nvidia/GeForce hardware encoder), but this suite doesn't seem to support hardware encoding on AMD cards:

EDIT:
Strictly speaking, NVENC is supported in Video Editor 12+ and Video Converter 16+ -- I just assumed you'll be using the full package.

And another bit. Not sure how current the info below is (last modified in 2018), but the conversion process appears to be limited to four CPU threads when utilizing the H.264 codec:

 

[A Computer Guy]

How efficiently the codec can compress the data really is down to how much hardware you want to throw at it. An old Ryzen 5 3600 can rapidly encode stuff if you just want to use a quick preset that isn't aiming to use every trick in the codec's dictionary to maximise image quality per bitrate.

...I will have to add that consideration into my getting longer list of research.

To add to your pile of research... along this line, if considering older zen2 parts as Chrispy_ mentioned with the R5 3600, there are quite a few ebay 3900x combos (CPU + MB + RAM) for around $350 for the extremely budget conscious but needing more cores. Could be quite the deal if the hardware is sufficient for your needs and/or may open the door for affording more GPU or software upgrades if needed. Of course used hardware is a risk but anyway I'd thought I'd mention it.

Another thing to consider is are there additional tools that might help you such as HandBreak? Given the possible limitation QuietBob brought about 4 core cpus and H.264 encoding with your current software that might also influence your hardware choices or how you decide to proceed with your existing software and workflow and getting around limitations.

 

[Chrispy_]

@videobruce, what is your current CPU/GPU/RAM/storage? In other words, we want to know if it's worth upgrading or just starting fresh. A vague idea of budget always helps too, otherwise the answer's just going to be "get a 9950X and RTX5090"

 

[videobruce]

The 'upgrade' will include the MB, the 2 4TB HDD's, Rosewell case, and hopefully the Seasonic PS will remain. It's a 700w 80Plus model.