Time to upgrade? at DVinfo.net

Tom Tailford · November 18th, 2008, 12:26 PM

I would say this year I have had an average job of 1 event to film, edit & produce to DVD per month. I use SD video, usually 3 cameras, sometimes 4x

I use Adobe Photoshop CS3, Premiere CS3, After Effects CS3, Encore CS3 for most editing.

My machine:
AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 5600+ 2.80GHz
2Gb Memory
Nvidia Geforce 8800GTS 320Mb
Western Digital Raptor 74GB SATA
250GB Internal SATA
500GB External USB2

Is it worth upgrading this? If so what sorts of things should I be looking at?

I was thinking it would probably be worth using the 500gb as backup or portable storage and possibly making a raid array for quick HD access?

Are quad cores the standard these days? Do I need at least 1Gb memory per core?

Please make any suggestions / offer advice. Thanks very much.

Tom

Ervin Farkas · November 18th, 2008, 02:27 PM

As we say here on the other side of the pond: if it ain't broken, don't fix it! If the present setup works fine, why would you want to spend money?

The only thing I would upgrade is the external hard drive - replace it with a RAID 1 at least, so your data is never lost.

Tom Tailford · November 18th, 2008, 05:35 PM

I suppose it works yes. I generally dont have to sit and edit the camera angles... my friend does that.

Im sure it would speed things up with Encore / After Effects =P but is an unnecessary spend.

I'm very impulsive at times which is probably why I came on here asking "what pootah bits should I get"... well that's a little insight about me, how about you? ASL? jk lol

Tripp Woelfel · November 18th, 2008, 05:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tom Tailford

I suppose it works yes.

If it works fast enough for you then there's probably no reason to upgrade. You might want to add a big internal drive rather than adding an external RAID. It would be quite a bit less dear and you could move it to another machine when the time comes to replace your system.

If you're a stickler for either speed or data protection then RAID 0 or RAID 1 (respectively) would be good options. There are a couple of precautions you can take to get a bit more protection:
1. Keep your projects and media files on different disks-if you lose the media drive, you can re-capture
2. Make periodic backup copies of your project files to another disk-if you lose the project drive, you have a backup
3. Make a copy of project, media and other components to your USB drive at the end of each day.

Each of these is really more backup than data resiliency . There are real and significant differences between the two that I won't bore you with here... unless you need a good kip.

Brian Brown · November 18th, 2008, 06:44 PM

Since you're editing SD, a CPU upgrade won't significantly improve anything other than your rendering times. A new-ish desktop Intel quad-core would likely cut your rendering times in half. If this is something of importance to you, consider it. If you were editing HDV or esp. AVCHD, a CPU upgrade would be worth the $ with improved previews and processing speed.

Another upgrade to consider is moving up to XP or Vista 64-bit OS. This won't speed up either previews or renders, but allows you to address more RAM (which you'd have to purchase, as well), and multi-task amongst your apps much more robustly. The caveat with a 64-bit upgrade is to be certain that all of your hardware, peripherals, and software have drivers and patches to work with the new OS. I ran the CS3 on Vista 64 with 8GB of RAM for over a year and had no significant issues... but YMMV.

Lastly, you could upgrade your software to CS4 and improve quite a few day-to-day aspects of editing and workflow. I highlighted a bunch of new features that I find useful to my particular workflow in this post: http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/attend-wo...bout-time.html

Cheers,
Brian Brown
BrownCow Productions

November 18th, 2008, 12:26 PM	#1
Tom Tailford Tourist Join Date: May 2008 Location: Lowestoft, Suffolk, UK Posts: 4	Time to upgrade? I would say this year I have had an average job of 1 event to film, edit & produce to DVD per month. I use SD video, usually 3 cameras, sometimes 4x I use Adobe Photoshop CS3, Premiere CS3, After Effects CS3, Encore CS3 for most editing. My machine: AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 5600+ 2.80GHz 2Gb Memory Nvidia Geforce 8800GTS 320Mb Western Digital Raptor 74GB SATA 250GB Internal SATA 500GB External USB2 Is it worth upgrading this? If so what sorts of things should I be looking at? I was thinking it would probably be worth using the 500gb as backup or portable storage and possibly making a raid array for quick HD access? Are quad cores the standard these days? Do I need at least 1Gb memory per core? Please make any suggestions / offer advice. Thanks very much. Tom

November 18th, 2008, 02:27 PM	#2
Ervin Farkas Trustee Join Date: Aug 2005 Location: Atlanta/USA Posts: 1,800	As we say here on the other side of the pond: if it ain't broken, don't fix it! If the present setup works fine, why would you want to spend money? The only thing I would upgrade is the external hard drive - replace it with a RAID 1 at least, so your data is never lost. __________________ Ervin

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November 18th, 2008, 05:35 PM	#3
Tom Tailford Tourist Join Date: May 2008 Location: Lowestoft, Suffolk, UK Posts: 4	I suppose it works yes. I generally dont have to sit and edit the camera angles... my friend does that. Im sure it would speed things up with Encore / After Effects =P but is an unnecessary spend. I'm very impulsive at times which is probably why I came on here asking "what pootah bits should I get"... well that's a little insight about me, how about you? ASL? jk lol

November 18th, 2008, 06:44 PM	#5
Brian Brown Major Player Join Date: Dec 2006 Location: Longmont, CO USA Posts: 224	Since you're editing SD, a CPU upgrade won't significantly improve anything other than your rendering times. A new-ish desktop Intel quad-core would likely cut your rendering times in half. If this is something of importance to you, consider it. If you were editing HDV or esp. AVCHD, a CPU upgrade would be worth the $ with improved previews and processing speed. Another upgrade to consider is moving up to XP or Vista 64-bit OS. This won't speed up either previews or renders, but allows you to address more RAM (which you'd have to purchase, as well), and multi-task amongst your apps much more robustly. The caveat with a 64-bit upgrade is to be certain that all of your hardware, peripherals, and software have drivers and patches to work with the new OS. I ran the CS3 on Vista 64 with 8GB of RAM for over a year and had no significant issues... but YMMV. Lastly, you could upgrade your software to CS4 and improve quite a few day-to-day aspects of editing and workflow. I highlighted a bunch of new features that I find useful to my particular workflow in this post: http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/attend-wo...bout-time.html Cheers, Brian Brown BrownCow Productions