help please building new part time edit system

[Bran Freeman]

Im really confused after researching on the net for hours apon hours and still no closer to deciding what editing hardware and software i can use.
Ive had experience editing promos and videos for a corporate events company using Premiere on an rt2500 and speed razor on a digisuite for about 5 years although im currently working abroad in a different field and want to set up a budget semi professional system at home(around 2.300 uk pounds or 4,100 US dollars) i would also like to be able to play the occassional game and use ity as my everyday PC

As far as i can understand the semi professional products i should be looking at for this price range are vegas, pinnaccle liquid, canopus exius nv for HDV , RTx100 and i believe there are also some lower end avid products.

I was realing hoping to use AMD or Intel dual core but niether the RTX100 or the canopus edius are compatible with motherboards you need for these chips. (am i correct??) Is it likely they will eventually support the standard Intel or AMD Dual core.

So the other solutions could be pinnacle or vegas. Am i correct in saying these are software solutions that will run on almost any sytem (as long as its fast enough) and provide real time playback and export. How do these solutions compare to hardware accelerator like the RTX100 and can anyone reccomend any other solutions to me.

I also wondered whether people think the RTX100 has much place in the near and longer term future or will the software based solutions take over.

What sort of realtime performance could i expect from a dual core amd 4800 using premiere.... I have aslo seen external USB2 conversion boxes could this be a solution.

Thanks to anyone with any advice or experience and sorry the post is such a muddle of questions but im so confused?????????????????????????????

[Christopher Lefchik]

Well, first off, do you expect to edit DV only for a while yet, or do you think you will move to HDV in the near future?

[Glenn Chan]

The different editing combinations/systems out there (software + hardware) more or less do the same thing. Edit video, audio stuff, titling, some basic special FX / compositing, color correction, and DVD authoring (many editing systems can be bundled with such a program). For all of those things other than video editing, you can go to seperate applications for those tasks.

If you want to do some of those tasks at a high level, you have to use 3rd party applications anyways (i.e. you have to use Shake / Combustion / After Effects for complicated special FX/compositing tasks). Usually you just need basic audio, titles, etc. and the major editing systems more or less have that (or have seperate applications that fill in the gaps).

If you're editing something other than DV (i.e. betaSP/uncompressed, HDV, DVCPRO HD with the HVX200), support for that varies between systems.

If you know mainly what type of things you will be editing, a particular program may be much more efficient at that than another program.
i.e. multi-camera work is much faster in some programs.

2- For the best bang for your buck, I don't think you can beat the Vegas6+DVD bundle.

Vegas 6 has ok titling, the best audio tools of any NLE (no need for pro tools), does basic special FX / compositing, really good color correction, and DVD architect takes care of the DVD authoring part.

Productivity-wise, it depends on what you do. For short to medium-length projects, it's nice. For longer-length projects (features, documentaries) you may want to consider other programs as they can have better media management (for organizing and keeping track of all your clips).

For the computer:
If you can build a computer yourself, wait for a deal on a Dell Dimension 9100 and throw in your own upgrades (dell upgrades are overpriced). dell.com --> small business --> outrageous deals
Look for free shipping.
You probably want to throw in 1GB RAM, DVD burner, more hard drive space (the computer is limited to two or something, so that may mean you should throw in a 400/500GB drive).

I don't think you can really go cheaper than that unless you go with more basic editing software like Vegas ?Screenblast, Avid Xpress, Final Cut Express, Premiere Elements, etc.

In my opinion, you can't go wrong with Vegas. Caveat:
If Vegas doesn't make sense to you (i.e. you're used to FCP/Avid/Premiere you'll have to learn a new program), then I don't recommend it. Try the demo off the Sony website before buying. Many people find it easy to use. There's good resources on this site and on others.
For non-DV formats, other systems may be worth looking at too. Although Vegas probably supports that format.
If render speed is critical, then another system may be better. Vegas has decent real-time previews but can be slow at rendering. All editing systems can have long render times, so this sort of depends on what you want to do.

I was realing hoping to use AMD or Intel dual core but niether the RTX100 or the canopus edius are compatible with motherboards you need for these chips. (am i correct??) Is it likely they will eventually support the standard Intel or AMD Dual core.

The RTX100 (premiere pro only) I believe is incompatible will all AMD64 chipsets. It should work on Intel chipsets that support dual core.
Don't know about Edius.

3- If you're not sure what to buy, you might want to go the value route since computers + software depreciate really quickly (about half value every two years). You are really paying exponentially more for small increases in productivity with faster systems.

How do these solutions compare to hardware accelerator like the RTX100 and can anyone reccomend any other solutions to me.

Generally speaking, hardware-accelerated editing systems are fast at very specific filters/effects. As soon as you step away from those, performance will drop. It'll end up as fast/slow as a software-only editing system (and slower in some ways).

If you post the kind of things you want to do with your editing system, then someone can give you some more specific advice.

[Bran Freeman]

thanks for all that
At the moment i just want to capture DV pal from my old 3ccd panasonic mini DV Cam, edit and record back to tape.
I would like to be able to edit 2-3 video tracks efficiently without rendering and have some real time effects,wipes .
I need to be able to output Mpeg and other formats quickly
I would like the ability to output low end broadcast quality.

I dont know if ill ever use hdv but will return back to my studio job in a couple of years so the capability would be nice but not essential.

I like to use premiere , Speed Razor Adobe AE and 3dsmax
but could easily learn another piece of editing software.

Thanks

[Glenn Chan]

If you don't own Premiere Pro and After Effects already, you might want to look into one of those bundle deals. Some of them include the Matrox RTX100 card too.

I believe one of the bundle choices was discontinued already, so you can't get that anymore (premiere pro + AE standard instead of AE pro).

That could be better bang for your buck if you need After Effects anyways.

[Bran Freeman]

i looked in to that but i dont think the RTX supports any
pentium Dual core and def not AMD dual core. Unfortuanately.

[Glenn Chan]

I was under the impression it would run on an Intel dual core system. But, I haven't heard of anyone doing so, so I might be wrong.

[Christopher Lefchik]

Looks like the Pentium dual core chips do work with the Matrox RT.X100

http://forum.matrox.com/rtx100/viewtopic.php?t=13539
http://forum.matrox.com/rtx100/viewtopic.php?t=13543

[Bran Freeman]

Thanks thats really helpfull the RTX does in fact wotk with Intel Dual core. Can anyone tell me will the edius nx for HDV work with dual core too.

The RTX and Edius were what i really wanted to use and it sounds like premiere 1.5 will be ok to work with some hdv in the future. Although the capability to upgrade to component out out on the edius would be nice.

Would i ever be able to export from a powerfull dual core and prem 1.5 to component?

these are the two motherboard suggested could anyone advice me to which one would be best for me?
ASUS 945 P5LD2
Supermicro PDSGE 955x motherboard

I will also need a powerfull graphics card am i better off with a special matrox card or will anew gforce do?

And lastly i was plannin on a 10 000 Rpm system drive and 2 SATA 250GB drives will this do or will i need some sort of raid configuration?

Thanks so much to you all im finally moving forward with this!!!

[Robert Mann Z.]

the only requirement from a computer in order to use the nx board is a 64bit pci slot...

edius itself will run fine on any modern day system

[Bran Freeman]

what are all the hardware compatibility charts at the capopus site for?
http://www.canopus-uk.com/UK/product...SNX_Compat.asp

None of these motherboards seemed to support dual core I think?

[Glenn Chan]

And lastly i was plannin on a 10 000 Rpm system drive and 2 SATA 250GB drives will this do or will i need some sort of raid configuration?

You're probably better off with a 7200rpm system drive and 2X250GB (or bigger).

Hard drive speed only makes a difference for:
swap file speed (you should max out RAM first though); swap file is when your computer runs out of RAM and has to use your hard drive for temporary memory. If you have more than enough RAM (usually 1 or 2GB is overkill, but that highly depends on what you run) then you won't have high swap file activity and hard drive speed won't be an issue.

Rendering out intermediary files, which you usually don't do often and it doesn't take that long. If you spend lots of time rendering out intermediary files, the fastest is to read off one drive and to write to another (as opposed to say, reading and writing to the same RAID 0). You can also read to/from RAIDs to hard drives.

Loading/closing applications, loading Windows

Running file/database/web servers

[Bran Freeman]

ok ill just make sure im understanding correctly.
I should set my edit program options to render to a seperate drive to where the original footage is.

So i should only need one regular 7200rpm sata drive for my system and two Sata7200RPM with no raid configuration data drives?
Thanks

[Glenn Chan]

I should set my edit program options to render to a seperate drive to where the original footage is.

You could.
In some/rare cases it can be a little faster.

So i should only need one regular 7200rpm sata drive for my system and two Sata7200RPM with no raid configuration data drives?

If you are editing DV, you're probably better off not RAIDing.

HDV: Don't know, but I don't think you need RAID. A RAID may increase the speed of making intermediary files if you edit with them. Some editing programs convert HDV to an intermediary format that is easier to edit.

other formats may need a RAID because they have higher data rates.