what computer do you guys use for Editing
 

i just bought a Canon XL2 and would like to edit my vidoes for a TV show using Avid or Adobe ... my question is what computer should i get ? what configration? because i think a decent Home use PC wont do the job ...

i might build it .. or buy if find a good deal .. but i need to know what processor and video card , and memory do i need ...

i want to create a lot of nice effects in the video ill be editing....

Thanks

Do you have a budget in mind? This can get expensive in a HURRY. And do you want a PC or an Macintosh? That is a consideration as well. Might also help to know if you have some idea of what software you will be using or buying to do your editing on.

-P

i would like to get a PC ..cause thats what i am comfortable with i have never used a Mac... i will use Avid or Adobe ....

my budget less then $2000

If you go to the Adobe web site they will tell you what hardware is recomended to run
the software.. if that helps...

Presently I'm using a Dell Precision 390 workstation...

Definately build it yourself.

Not inlcuding operating system, software, monitor, speakers, cables, etc, I'd recomend...

- CPU - Intel Q9450 2.66GHz - $329 - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819115042
- RAM - 4GB Corsair - $109 - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820145194 Get two sets to make 8GB.
- Video Card - Nvidia 8600GTS - $99 - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814121069 - You don't need a particularly good video card as video editing is mainly CPU-intensive, in spite of its name.
- HDD 1 - Hitatchi 320GB - $50 - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822145213 - For Operating system, all software, etc.
- HDD 2 - Samsung 1TB - $179 - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822152102 - Get two of these, you can never have enough HDD space! I'd probably put the input files on one of the drives, and render the output files to the other.
- Case - Li-Lan - $90 - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16811112154 - Nothing too fancy, but good cooling and enough space inside for a couple more HDDs in the future

That comes to aproximately $1150. You will still need a Motherboard and Powersupply, I can't help with those I'm afraid. I'd estimate you'd easily be able to get a decent M/B and PSU for $250-350 total.

Final total, less than $1500.

You might want to investigate a RAID setup for your hard drives, I don't know anything about it myself, but perhaps somebody else could step in...?

You don't need a particularly powerful (by today's standards) computer to edit SD. You don't need to spend nearly $2000.

That said, (at current prices) you can get a lot of value for your money with an AMD Phenom X3 or X4, teamed with a motherboard built on either AMD's 780G or NVidia's 8200 chipsets.

Keep in mind that Avid no longer makes Xpress or Xpress Pro. Now the cheapest one is the software only version of Media Composer for around $2500.

There's no point to putting more than 4 gigs of memory in the computer, unless you want to run 64bit XP or Vista (which I would not suggest, unless you REALLY know what you are doing- 32bit XP will give you the least headaches). 32bit operating systems cannot use more than 4 gigs of RAM. This is a pretty sweet deal on high quality memory chips:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820227267

One thing not to skimp on is the power supply. Run of the mill power supplies can (and will) come back to haunt you (with flaky performance and component failures). This is a very good premium power supply, at a decent price (you could spend less, but it would probably cost you more in the long haul):

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817139005

A Q9450 is considerable overkill for editing SD (understatement), and pretty pricey. Just about any decent dual/triple/quad core processor will be quite adequate (any triple or quad is going to fly for editing SD). If you want to go the Intel quad route, I'd suggest a Q6600 or Q9300. The Q6600 is a good value at today's prices. The Q9450 will be about 5% faster than the Q9300 (due to slightly higher clock rate), but about 25-30% more expensive. The larger cache on the Q9450 makes almost no difference at all for video editing/rendering/compression.

If you go the AMD route, the onboard graphics on AMD 780G or NVidia 8200 motherboards are adequate, and there's really no need for a discrete video card. The options for onboard graphics on Intel boards aren't as good though. If you build a computer around an Intel CPU, this is a nice deal on a video card:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814125089

Terabyte drives are still a little pricey (per gig). This is a nice deal on 750 gigabyte drives:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822145166

Oops, I didn't see the part where his camera was an XL2, I just saw the budget and went for it... my bad.

Still, it can't hurt to future proof, right?

I just built up a new computer in January
I'm running an intel q6700
4 gigs of ram
Gforce 86000 gts
2 hard drives

Works great for standard video....but then again my 4 year old PC which was also close to top of the line when I bought it worked pretty good also.
I havn't put any High deff stuff on this computer to try it out yet.

thanks for soo many replies ..

at the moment i am running Dell 531 with AMD Atlon X2 5600+ (2.8Ghz processor) with 4 Gb Ram and a 256 MB Graphic card. i did install a PCI Firwire card my self... i am have DELL XPS 1530 with intel 2 Duo 2.33Ghz , 3 Gb ram and 250 HHDwith 256MB ithink 8600GtX card

i did buy a 8800GTX card for my desktop but that does not fit on my motherboard ! ....

i want to use Avid (as i have heard that the industry standard for pc) to use Avid do i need to use a specific video card ? is that true ?

also i would like to have capibabilty to do a lot of differnet things with my videos ... like flying text and even cartoon characters walking across the screen in the video ... would that be possible with kind of computers you guys are suggesting?

what mother board should i get if i am building my own system?

If those are the computers you already have I think you will be fine, and I would not purchase another one. Maybe just get another hard drive.
Someone told me avid media composer requires at least a Gforce 8600...but I have nothing to back this up with.

I know very little about AVID, so I can't really comment on video card compatibility issues there.

The computers you have should be just fine for editing video shot with your XL2. As to the special effects, that really depends on how you generate them, but again, the computers you have will probably be quite adequate. I wouldn't suggest building a new computer unless you run into difficulties with the ones you have (which doesn't seem very likely). If you only have one HDD in your desktop though, it would be a good idea to add at least one more.

If you do build a new computer, choice of motherboard really depends on what CPU you will use.

how mmuch does it matter what video card i use?

I suggest you download the trial versions of Vegas and Premiere (try Vegas first). Either one is probably way more than adequate for starting out (and should run fine on what you have). Jumping straight to AVID would seem a bit much to bite off for a beginner.