Help with configuration
 

I'm planning on buying a 36gb Western Digital 10,000rpm SATA hard drive and a 120gb WD 7,200rpm SATA hard dive. Is this good enough for video editting with Premiere Pro. Also on which drive should I install windows on and which drive should I store my captures and A/V?

Small drive for the OS and the larger drive for the capture go into the Preferences of Premiere Pro and set the Scratch Disk as the Slave to which the large one is. By the way see if you can max out your RAM as this helps in the long run.

As for your computer setup it sounds good as you have SATA drives. How are you planning to import the video into your computer? FireWire, USB, or a video capture card?

I have in the past used a firewire but is a video capture card going to improve the quality of the video, the rendering time, and take the bulk of the work away from the CPU?

FireWire is cheaper and more people are using them as we just did on a feature film. However for rendering to exporting to converting nothing beats a good video card.

Could you suggest any good capture cards? I do mostly shorts but I want to expand. Thanks

A video capture card is not going to improve quality if you're just working with DV.

However, with one of the hardware acceleration cards (like the one from Matrox) you'll get more real-time and faster rendering with Premiere Pro.
Canopus and some other manufacturers also make these kind of cards. They should have firewire ports on them so you don't need a firewire card. digitalvideoediting.com should have some reviews.

What Operating System are you running like Win 2000, XP, XP Pro.....

What is your budget for such a card?

If you really don't have much of a budget I just had a guy finish a 1 and 1/2 movie with just a FireWire card. That was from import to export and something like that starts around $35.00 upwards to $60.00 for the better ones.

I'd go for the FireWire card from a local computer store.

My budget is small since most will be going to building a complete computer: P4 3.0 HT, 1gb of 3200 DDR, 36gb Western Digital SATA @ 10,000rpm and 120gb Western Digital SATA @ 7,200, Lit-On 52x24x52 burner, 21 Trinitron monitor. But where does it really count when it come to editing? I was once told buy a guy who does it for a living and he said on the consumer end it depends mostly on the hard drive, ram, processor, and then video card. Does the Matrox help any? I will be using premiere pro for editing alone with after effects 5.5. Thanks

Maybe you want dual monitors instead of one. It's usually cheaper. ATI and Nvidia and Matrox have cards that support dual monitors.

With most NLEs processor speed is the biggest factor in rendering time and real-time ability. Hardware acceleration cards help but cost a lot.

<<<-- Originally posted by Glenn Chan : With most NLEs processor speed is the biggest factor in rendering time and real-time ability. -->>>

Based on personal experience, I can also say that hard drive speed also plays a large part in rendering time and real-time ability.

This is from comparing speeds on my PIII 750MHz desktop with a 7200rpm drive to my P4 2.8GHz laptop with a 5400rpm drive. When doing a full render of a 1 hour project (where about 10% needs rendering and the rest is copied), the times were about the same. When doing a PTT where ONLY the changed sections were rendered, the laptop took 1/4 the time.

While editing a 3 camera shoot, the slower desktop is more responsive as you proceed down the timeline than the laptop.

Connecting a 7200rpm external drive to the laptop changes everything - the laptop then runs away from the slower desktop.

Try the firewire first and see how you like it. If you do lots of effects and you want true realtime rendering then get the card other than that save your money for something else.

<<I have in the past used a firewire but is a video capture card going to improve the quality of the video, the rendering time, and take the bulk of the work away from the CPU?>>

Reading this thread I thought something is unclear.

DV video is captured digitally only by means of FireWire connection. If your mother board have it you are done.
If not you will need add on PCI card. Vegas need only this for full functionall editing system.

Video card is just for connecting your monitor. Capture card is usually refered as analog capture device (composite input, TV tuner).

The third thing is Real Time Effects card as Canopus DV Storm and many others from Maxtor, etc. They come with plugins for real time using Adobe Premiere so you see all effects in reall time - no need to wait the applied effect to render first. You capture the actual video again via FireWire on this card.

Video quality shouldn't be different if you capture via FireWire. Do not use analog capture card to acure DV in your PC.

I got to admit this thread has helped me understand what I need. I have in the past often tweaked the video in post production and realtime rendering was slow so I had to do a full render. 15 mintue clips that would take upwards of 3 hours in certain cases. So my graphics card does little to help with the rendering? And how does Premiere know that I have a capture card and will be using it for realtime editing? Thanks again.

<<I have in the past often tweaked the video in post production and realtime rendering was slow so I had to do a full render. >>

Realtime rendering can't be slow if it's realtime. Realtime means 1:1 ratio so you shouldn't wait at all to see the effect you applied in full quality.

As I said with Adobe Premiere you can achieve that adding expensive "real time" DV card using hardware and software tricks to make everything smooth.

Vegas use clever software trick lowering the display resolution for the preview so you actually see also the effects in reall time if you have enough proccesing power.


<<So my graphics card does little to help with the rendering?>>

The video card (VGA card to be more precise) is for conveying the image on your display. Good VGA card will take less resources which can be used for your editing tasks or even for dual monitor display. The main as mentioned from other posts here is the system (MoBO, CPU, RAM and HDD) power. Even the reall time cards mentioned use scalable technology to get advantage from more powerful configurations.

<< And how does Premiere know that I have a capture card and will be using it for realtime editing?>>

Through the plug ins which come with the card. There are even bundled versions of this cards which come straight with Premiere or other editing software (Edius?)