I used to edit most of my Videos.. either on filmschool... or friends Computers... Mostly Mac´s...
I´ve done a few things In my PC... but nothing very "dedicated" if you know what I mean..

Now I have to start editing more serious stuff on my PC... and I need to give it a boost... but as usual I have a very limited budget (I mean, very limited budget)...

Here are my specs...

AMD XP 1600
20 GB. HD
40 Gb HD
256 RAM PC 133
Win XP / Premier 6 / Combustion 2.0 /
Some Old SB sound card.
Some crappy Pc Speakers... / Good pair of Sony Pro headphones...
Nvdia GForce 400mx 64mb

I know I have to invest in RAM for sure... And probably get me another Hard Drive...

So my doubts are mainly in Audio Gear... and in "I-Didn´t-know- that-existed or I-didn´t-know-Ineeded that" Gear

For soundcard what do you reccomend between these:
Audigy 2 OEM - 64€
Audigy - 53€
SB Live Player - 26€
________________(Fill in the blank with your reccomendation)
having that whatever I can save here would go to more ram or betters speakers... or bigger HD.

what woulbe a good set of speakers to pseudo monitoring? (Under 100$/€)

Any other suggestions for sound?...
For "I-Didn´t-know- that-existed or I-didn´t-know-Ineeded that" Gear?..

Thanx..

Get as much contiguous HD space as you can afford. 20 and 40 gig hd isn't much, even for your applications and for your virtual memory needs. If I built a system today, it would have two internal 120gig drives and I would transfer over my two external 120gigs to hook into the Firewire.

Well two 120gb internal and a couple of firewire external is not in the "very limited budget" concept.
But thanx... I hear you on this and I´ll try to get my hands on a 120 Gb HD instead of the 60 I was going for...

I´m just working in a series of mini-short fiction... (around 1 to 2 min.. no more than 5 minutes) so I won´t be needing a bigger HD for now...

For our Lady X episode we shot I think four tapes worth of video and I'm sure Dylan had most of that on his HD at one time. Then count on having lots of that parceled out into clips, edit versions. And then saving sources. Each project adds up. Hard to archive DV unless you want to print to tape.

Anyway, with a Firewire card then you can add external drives easily when you can afford it.

External enclosure + 120 gig 7200RPM HD runs arouind C$400.

Well I know how fast can you consume the gigas on HD when editing video... but as long as I can´t afford more HD... then I´ll have to be very carefull...
(just capture what I really need to use, print to tape edited-uncompressed video for backup at critical points, make CD backups of sound, never more than 2 projects on the PC at the same time, etc.. )

I had a good "hard way" learning experience on this subject back in filmschool, using mistreated "little" G4s shared with several other students-projects... and having HDrives crashing... loosing almost done projects...


I´ll be fine with just 120Gb for now.. (plus what I already have) I do have a firewire card.. so I guess I´ll be able to get my an external in a few months... besides HDrives are getting cheaper with time.. so I think it will be wise to buy only when needed...

Any advice on the sound stuff?