Money is no object editing PC

[Scott Gold]

John Hewat,

Did you ever get your system setup and running?
How do you like it?
What was your final configuration and cost?
Any details or notes about building this system that you would like to pass along to hopeful builders? I'm thinking about building a similar rig.
What would have you done differently?

Thanks,

Scott

[Guy Godwin]

This thread has my head spinning...

Currently I am n the market for a major upgrade. I just got the camera last fall (XL2) and now need to support it. I have been using Pinnacle Studio on my work laptop (1.5Ghz 480 MB or RAM)

My budget is somewhat limited...
I would like to stay under $3500.00 and upgrade my PC and NLE.

I plan to capture/edit and publish to the web sporting events and others. However, DVD production is as important as the web stuff. Most of the sporting events will be 16:9/60i and later on HD.

I will need to edit,deinterlace,encode for the web etc....

Having said that I am a hobbiest (unless my idea works)...

I need suggestions on a Desktop and NLE. (Considering Adobe or Vegas )

If anyone here can make this process easier on me I would greatly appreciate it.

[John Hewat]

Well Scott, those are difficult questions to answer.

Did you ever get your system setup and running?
How do you like it?

1. The system is up and running and it moves like a fighter jet. CS3 opens in mere seconds and renders quick as a flash. I have nothing except MS Office, Adobe CS3 (the whole Production Premium package), Cineform and Magic Bullet Looks installed on the computer and it is not networked or Interneted. So nothing much can make it self destruct.

Except anything made by Adobe...

So despite its swiftness and perfection in every area of operation (to which I owe endless thanks to the advice given to me here) the thing has still crashed and frozen occasionally when CS3 decides it doesn't like what I'm asking it to do. Sometimes that's capturing, sometimes it's minimizing a window... I suspect that that's just an Adobe thing that would happen no matter what computer it was running on. In terms of failure rates, this workstation is miles ahead of my previous Dual Core AMD on which PPro would fail on us multiple times per projec, without exception.

Whilst working (on paid jobs) PPro has only failed once and when I re-opened it it recovered the file perfectly. (This was a 2.5 hour SD project and I was using the superb Multi-Camera function at the time with three cameras.)

As for Magic Bullet... I cannot figure it out. It renders slower on this super computer than it does on my cheapo with half the processing cores, half the RAM and a slower graphics card than this machine. So I'm still trying to get to the bottom of that. I just can't figure it out. I'm planning on upgrading the two 7800s in it to dual 8800s, but that's an expense I hadn't anticipated so I've been holding off on it until a job really calls for me to use Magic Bullet extensively.

I said it moves like a fighter jet - it also sounds a bit like one. I edit in my family room, with people sitting on the couch right next to the computer, so it gets a bit annoying for them. I of course have my headphones on the whole time so I don't get bothered, but if you're editing in a shared room, it could very easily cause annoyance.

What was your final configuration and cost?

It's as follows and in $AU

Motherboard: SuperMicro X7DW-AN -- $955
Processor x2: Intel Xeon 5450 Quad Core 3.0GHz -- $2,320
Memory: 4 x 1GB Kingston FB ECC Module DDR2 667MHz -- $500
HDD (RAID 0): 4 x Samsung Spinpoint 500GB, 16MB cache, 7200rpm (these are supposedly silent but the machine is so loud their silence is wasted) -- $656
HDD (System): Western Digital Raptor 74GB, SATA 150, 16MB cache, 10,000rpm -- $190
Graphics 1: Asus 7800GT (I already owned this)
Graphics 2: XFX 7800GTX (I already owned this too)
Optical: Lite-On 20xDVD Burner -- $45
Case: Cooler Master Cosmos -- $289
Power: Antec 1000W True Power Quatro Blah Blah Blah -- $330
Operating Sys: Windows XP Pro 32Bit -- $195
Assembly & Test: $125

TOTAL: $5,605

Add another $900+ for a 24" BenQ monitor, $1000 for two Samsung 22" monitors, the cost of the two 7800 cards, the cost of the Adobe suite, Cineform Prospect HD and you've got a pile of cash longer than your arm.

I don't want to hear anyone say "I saw this for half the price" or "You got ripped off with the whatever" please don't break my heart :)

Any details or notes about building this system that you would like to pass along to hopeful builders?

Running dual video cards sucks. It causes so many pains in the neck with PPro that I hate it. But when things are going smoothly, editing on the two 22" monitors with my preview on the 24" is very, very nice. (Just remember that this doesn't work properly in a Cineform project).

Also, something that either Harm or Mike said to me somewhere in this thread is something like "Don't expect to get it right on the first go."

And I guess they were right. I wanted it to be perfect upon completion but it wasn't. For some strange reason I had to swap the PCI-Express ports that the GPU cards were plugged into. For some reason, that solved some of my "triple-monitor" issues.

I've still got troubles with Magic Bullet being out-performed by a feather-weight computer.

The Realtek HD Audio software is s&%t and keeps popping up to tell me that a jack has been unplugged or plugged in, when I haven't touched the thing.

The firewire port won't see my Z1 (I'd love some advice on this issue - it won't see it with HDV or SD footage on the tape, in PPro or in Windows Movie Maker, though it will see my little Panasonic NV-GS230 which just confuses the heck out of me. If someone could advise me on where to turn first I'd love some help! It's so frustrating having to capture on another PC when I have a perfectly good super-computer sitting right next to it!)

And I have the odd issue with Cineform footage playing up and going a bit weird.

But each of these issues is sort of over-shadowed by the fact that playing back HD footage from my PMW-EX1 happens in a heartbeat without a glitch or hickup and that PPro moves so seamlessly and simple renders are near instantaneous. I feel like I'll conquer the other troubles as they become pressing (Firewire port being priority number one!).

What would have you done differently?

Gone into the photography business instead of the videography business.

[Guy Godwin]

Originally Posted by Guy Godwin

This thread has my head spinning...

Currently I am n the market for a major upgrade. I just got the camera last fall (XL2) and now need to support it. I have been using Pinnacle Studio on my work laptop (1.5Ghz 480 MB or RAM)

My budget is somewhat limited...
I would like to stay under $3500.00 and upgrade my PC and NLE.

I plan to capture/edit and publish to the web sporting events and others. However, DVD production is as important as the web stuff. Most of the sporting events will be 16:9/60i and later on HD.

I will need to edit,deinterlace,encode for the web etc....

Having said that I am a hobbiest (unless my idea works)...

I need suggestions on a Desktop and NLE. (Considering Adobe or Vegas )

If anyone here can make this process easier on me I would greatly appreciate it.

anybody care to recommend anything here? ^^^

[Adam Gold]

Both Sony and Adobe have hardware recommendations on the websites for their NLEs. I'd recommend looking at those and going "one better." Adobe in particular has a page called "OpenHD" which shows specific turnkey systems that they've "certified" to work.

Here's a link:

http://www.adobe.com/adobeopenhd/cer...solutions.html

[Guy Godwin]

Originally Posted by Adam Gold

Both Sony and Adobe have hardware recommendations on the websites for their NLEs. I'd recommend looking at those and going "one better." Adobe in particular has a page called "OpenHD" which shows specific turnkey systems that they've "certified" to work.

Here's a link:

http://www.adobe.com/adobeopenhd/cer...solutions.html

Adam,
Thanks for that link. I think something in that line might just work for my applications.

[John Hewat]

The time has come for me to upgrade the graphics cards - I'm getting sick of Magic Bullet being outperformed by a second rate system.

So I'm looking at getting a pair of the 9800GTX cards to put in the two PCI-Express ports. My concern lies in the fact that those cards both look like they require two PCI-E power plugs each! And I don't know whether I'll have the facility to do so.

Motherboard: SuperMicro X7DW-AN
Power: Antec 1000W True Power Quatro

As it is, the system has a single PCI-E power cable running to one of the 7800s and there are two spares that are not plugged in. I'm worried that I will be short a few cables and don't really know what's involved in simply plugging them in and hoping it all works...

I just read this on a forum about the card:

It requires 2 x 6pin power adapters which are supplied, but each of those will require 2 x molex connections. So if you do not have 4 molex power connections available you may need to upgrade your PSU too. 3/5 for power

I don't even know what a molex connection is or looks like but if one card needs 4 of them then I'd need 8 of them and I don't think that'll work... will it?

[John Hewat]

P.S.

Also, just copied the entire system drive to a spare HDD using HDBoot, which is the best thing ever (and free for download (and only 4MB)).

So basically I have two identical system drives, which both load up perfectly.

So I'm going to leave my editing system totally alone and never add anything to it - anything I ever need to test, I'll test on my back-up system first, which I can also allow to have access to the Internet or install games on or whatever.

And the best part is, I completely unplug the Editing System Drive from the computer when I'm using the alternate system drive - so it's pretty much perfectly safe from infection.

I thought I'd ask what problems I may expect to find (if any). So far it's worked like a charm - I'm even using two completely different sized HDDs for the two system drives and created an additional partition on the back-up drive and swapped system drives half a dozen times with no errors, no need to change anything in the BIOS or anything. So I'm feeling very optimistic! If anyone has done similarly and encountered problems, I'd love to hear about them in advance...

Next step... GPUs... any advice on that matter by the way?

Thanks,
-- John.