I'm finally in a position to buy an dedicated NLE video editing computer. This editing system will be used to edit our video for VHS, DVD, Intenet and hopefully broadcast medias. Budget is 5K.

The next decision is whether to purchase a turn key system or build one. I've built several computers so I'm familair with how to install hardware and software.

I would like to use a dual Intel processor to have the brute horsepower if needed. I know Macs are sweet to use but do I need to go that route or stay in the Micro$oft world?

Is it better in the long run to buy an turn key system for video editing or to build the system yourself? Any venders or brands to look at?

Other components I would need are an audio mixer, voiceover mic and a dual monitor setup. Any other equipment that is needed?

Basically looking for a poh boy pro editing setup. Camera will be a GL2. I see where several members have recommended picking the editing software 1st and then getting the computer to match the software. I haven't a clue to which one to pick. I see Vegas and Premiere mentioned a lot here and they seem to be the most popular.

Thank you for your help.

Buying a turnkey system from, say, Compaq, Gateway or Dell is never the high performance solution. They match the performance to the price they want to offer by redesigning the components, whereas if you build your own you can match the performance to what you need.

When it comes time to get the latest widget, it's sometimes easier to swap out the component without concern whether it will work. Compaq in particular is horrendous for this.

The only disadvantage is that by the time I want the latest widget I need to upgrade everything else anyway.

You can do a lot with 5k. If your budget is really that high, you can afford to save yourself the various hassles of system configuration and buy a turnkey system. Find a good reputable system integrator, present your budget, and get yourself a good fast system with lots of RAM.

Jesse, I'm in the process of upgrading to a new NLE myself and first went to some NLE system integrators to see what they were offering that would be compatible with the Real Time card I plan to use. I've been using a Matrox RT2500 for a couple of years and have been satisfied with it, but may switch to Canopus this time. Still undecided there, but will likely go with Matrox or Canopus. I also want to play around with Vegas and see what that's all about, but Premiere Pro looks sweet!

Next I checked the NLE vendor websites to see what components had been certified for use with their boards. I then went to newegg.com and priced out the identical components used by the system integrators to determine what premium would be paid for a turnkey system. Turns out that they are getting anywhere from $300 - $1000 over a DIY system for identical parts. ($300 isn't too bad, but $1000 will buy a lot of extras)

I'm planning to go with a P4 3.0Ghz system, not a dual CPU board, so you might want to go through the same exercise and see what you come up with.

Good Luck and let us know how it all works out.

check out HDBoxx.

www.boxxtech.com

Rob

I just did a major upgrade of my main editing computer.

From a dual PIII 850's with one gig to:

Asus P4C800-E deluxe $185
holds 4 gigs of ram
4 IDE drive channels
2 SATA regular + 2 SATA RAID ports
1 IDE RAID port for 2 drives
Intel gigabit LAN
8 USB
2 firewire
Game/MIDI port
ESBU digital sound
6.1 sound card
slot for wireless LAN card
Intel P4 2.4C Ht $169
Matched OCZ 512 meg sticks of ddr3200 ram $289
Radeon 9600 Pro $168
550 watt power supply $98

To a 60 gig C drive, and a 120 and 200 gig WD 7200 rpm, 8 meg buffer drives I added a 160 gig Seagate SATA drive $209

I already had the Server cabinet so I didn't have to pay for that but a Server cab can be had for under $200.

I already have a Canopus DVRexRT with Edius so I didn't have to do anything but slide the new motherboard under them.

Fast enough for most of the realtime I need. Only requires rendering with 3D transitions which I don't use. Video and Audio filters are all real time.

A dual Intel solution would be a lot more expensive.

I'd wait a bit if you can and see how the 64 bit AMD chipset plays out. It is said to be faster with 32 bit code than the Intels and, of course, very fast with 64 bit code.

Go with the NLE/hardware combo you like best. For encoding stuff I prefer the PC platform because all the good encoders are there. Go with either a Pentium or dual Xeons (expensive). Benchmarks comparing the 2 are at anadtech.com and tomshardware.com. For great value go with an overclocked Pentium system. You can end up with a system that has a definite advantage over the most expensive stock system while paying a bit less.

But Macs are sweet....

I wondered but haven't asked by now - can you mix IDE and SATA drives? Also how do you partition the drives? I guess the video drive is best to be left all one partition.

You can mix those kinds of drives. IDE is cheaper right now I believe.

You can partition the drives with the included software or with a program like partition magic. One partition is fine and probably the best setup.

Thanks for all the input. It looks like a single P4 will do for now from reading Anand's and Tom's.

Mike, what are the 2 extra drives used for on your new editing system? Backup?

A second drive is almost mandatory for video editing.

I normally have 4-5 projects underway that are up to 3 hours in length. Frequently, even for short projects, I may have 4 or 5 hours of video so it all takes a lot of storage.

I'll probably add another SATA drive in the next month or so.

I just took 6 SCSI drives off of the system and replaced all of them with more capacity in just the one 160 Gig SATA.

5 X 18 gig Barracudas
1 X 75 gig Cheetah

The SATA is a little bit more expensive than ATA drives but it is faster by enough that it makes a difference in how many RT video streams I can handle.

just want to add in the storage note. if you get TWO promise s150 sx4 RAID controllers and buy 6 Maxtor 200GB hard drives and put them all in RAID 0 config (4 on1 and 2 on the other) you can have over 1 terabyte of hard drive =D. imagine having 10+ hrs of DV footage for your chopping enjoyment =D.

You don't need to buy the Promise controllers to get RAID.

NT, 2000 & XP will support software RAID very nicely.

Hey, you have to check this site out: http://www.go-l.com/. Their editing systems are beasts!!! Their setups are definitely possible although some people claim their site is a hoax. But really, it's worth visiting because it looks like a clone of the Apple site and their setups are nice.

although the promise will fair not much better (since it doesn't have an onboard processor) that doesn't mean it won't do a much better job than win. software RAID should be avoided at all costs!!! data is too precious to play games with. what promise's card will have is hardware "accelerated" assistance and that, my friend, is MUCH better than having NOTHING at all. i strongly urge against software RAIDs. besides the price/performance is not too shabby @all. sheck this out:

http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/perf/raid/conf/ctrlSoftware-c.html

-- Originally posted by Mike Rehmus : You don't need to buy the Promise controllers to get RAID.

NT, 2000 & XP will support software RAID very nicely.

I've been using software raids for about 5 years now with never a problem. Massive video files, days of editing, nothing fazes them.

In fact the only RAID problem I had was with a Promise card before I switched to the soft route.

The nice thing about software RAID is that all of the disk utility software companies develop their software with Soft RAID in mind because it's built by Microsoft. Add a hardware controller in the mix and now you have 3 companies involved.

That's exactly how I lost data on my Promise'd RAID. Norton didn't exactly and completely support the hardware.

Mike,

I am VERY interested in this soft-RAID thing, I've always been told I had to get a card. How do you physically connect the drives to your IDE? Say I want six 200GB drives, will WinXP Prof handle that?

To everyone else,

Please check out SaferSeas.com. They have some custom built turnkey systems that are better than anything I've seen. They take the best boards, drives, video cards, etc, and piece together a system that will blow your mind.
They even package together the audio editing components that were mentioned.

I am not affliated with them, but I've been shopping for two years and I am going to go with them when my budget is approved. I can't wait!!

Yes, you can hook up many drives although I've only had 4 going at once. Normal IDE controller connections. I've had 4 channels of IDE controller and 2 channels of SCSI operating at the same time with 11 disks. Plus a CD burner and a DVD player.

Right Click on My Computer, click on Manage, Click on Disk Management.

Make each drive a Dynamic volume by right clicking on the gray box at the left of each drives line. Then under the Action menu, tell the system what you want to do.

Oh, you can also mirror drives in software if you need to.

Thanks! But more specific to the hardware, do they have IDE cables with 4 or more plugs on them? Do you just daisy chain them or what?

You can only attach 2 drives to an IDE ribbon (although performance will be degraded since you can't access both at once). Most motherboards will have 2 IDE channels (supports 4 drives). The optimal setup is one drive per channel. You can add more channels with IDE controller cards- these come with some of the >137GB hard drives and hardware RAID controllers will also have multiple channels- anywhere from 2 to 8 and maybe even more.

But anyways, once you have all the drives plugged in (they should all be the same model) you use software (i.e. winXP) to RAID them together.

performance?

Glenn, your statements and Mike Rehmus' are contradictary. Mike says he is able to run >4 drives without hardware RAID controllers. Also, the other two ports are usually occupied by DVD burners/CD-ROMs etc., so we're really talking about 2, unless Mike has found a way to wire more. That's what I'm hoping he'll respond to.

You can run more than 4 drives by adding in IDE/ATA controller cards. A RAID controller can also act as a (very expensive) IDE controller card.

With SCSI (which is what Mike has) you can have lots of drives per channel. On some motherboards this is built in, otherwise you have to get a SCSI controller. If your motherboard has SATA controllers too then you can put in 1 drive for each SATA controller.

You will notice I said I had 4 channels of IDE and a 2-channel SCSI controller in a single computer.

More detail:
I had 5 SCSI drives RAIDed at once and 2 IDE drives RAIDed per channel pair.

The speeds were way more than is necessary for real time computing. Sustained read & write speeds with 66 mhz IDE channels and drives (5400 rpm) was as good as the 10,000 rpm Seagate Cheetah SCSI drive (75 gig, standalone, not RAIDed).

For most of my work, the SATA (Seagate) and 133 Mhz ATA drives (Western Digital 8 meg buffer, 7200 rpm) are fast enough when they are running in DMA mode.

Since reliability without mirroring on RAID drives is not as good (although I've only had the single problem on the Promise RAID) as separate drives, I haven't installed RAID in the latest version of my main editing computer.

Since the motherboard has a built-in Promise controller for 2 SATA and 2 ATA drives, I will probably add to them later.

This motherboard, BTW, has 7 IDE channels if you count the conventional 2-channel IDE setup (2 drives per cable), the 2 SATA, 2 SATA RAID & single ATA RAID (2 drives, one cable)

I didn't find much difference between Master and Slave positions for the RAIDed drives. I did avoid placing a pair on a single channel. Obviously Promise & Asus don't consider that a big problem since the Promise controller offers only a single channel for the ATA RAID setup.

Bottom line - Software RAIDs are more than fast enough for normal real-time video editing. Only if I were to start working with a significant amount of uncompressed or HD video would I go to a faster setup. Then that would be the fastest SCSI RAID, not ATA.