I am trying to determine what hardware I need on a new computer in order to have smooth playback and fairly fast renders when editing HD footage with few added effects in CS6. I'm going to be editing a daily 3-hour clip down to 1 hour and exporting that hour plus smaller clips. My main concern is having slow renders.

Right now, I'm looking at an i7 with 16 gigs of DDR3 Ram. Would adding a GTX 680 and a 10,000 or 15,000 RPM hard drive for the exports drive be good enough?

In general, how much does a 10,000 RPM or 15,000 RPM drive improve exports vs a 7,200? Does having a higher-RPM drive on the drive with the source footage help at all, or does it only matter on the drive you're rendering to?

I'd consider going with some kind of RAID configuration.
That video card isn't on the Adobe list yet, highest version they show is the GeForce GTX 580.

System requirements | Adobe Premiere Pro (http://helpx.adobe.com/x-productkb/policy-pricing/system-requirements-premiere-pro.html)

I would consider these to be very bare minimum and you want as much memory as your computer will hold. I have 16GB on my laptop and memory is so cheap now, why not?

I have the GTX 680M on my edit laptop, works a treat. You may have to do the famous "hack" to add it to the Adobe list...you will find numerous references on this Adobe thread to accomplishing this simple task.. There is also good information here, but they make it more complicated than it is:

Adobe Premiere CC, CS6, CS5.5 and CS5 Video Cards with CUDA Acceleration Mercury Playback Unlock Enable MPE Hack Mod Tip OpenCL David Knarr (http://www.studio1productions.com/Articles/PremiereCS5.htm)

+1 on the raid configuration, also.

I assume this topic has bean discussed all too often, but what RAID configuration would be best with say 4 1TB drives? And how should I allocate the drive with the source footage, the export drive, and the media cache?

If by "allocate" you mean "partition", I don't see much advantage to doing so. I'd be inclined to put them all into a single striped array. 4TB is lots of room to do a project in. Of course, you'd need to come up with a separate data backup scheme, possibly going with an external set of drives. I'd like to go to that "toaster" setup that's been mentioned around here, where you insert bare-bones drives into slots of a HDD controller (toaster). You'd have your project files organized into folders on the 4GB RAID, and backup the source media once, then just periodically backup the project working files.

Mark, by "allocate" I just meant as an example that one drive would have source footage, one would have media cache, and another would have exports.

Are you saying that I should have my OS on a drive, and then the 4 1TB drives I mentioned would be in a RAID 0, and would contain the source footage, project files, media cache, and exports? With so few drives, wouldn't it be better to just use the drives not in RAID, and then have the source files on one, the media cache on other, and the exports drives on a third?

Hard drives are a bottleneck for video editing. If you can improve drive performance, your renders and other file operations will not slow you down as much. In a 2-drive RAID 0 configuration, I read reports that HDD speeds nearly doubled. I don't recall if the speed improves even more by going with a 4-drive RAID, but it stands to reason that's what could be expected.

You could allocate one HDD for media, one for renders, one for final DVD production, etc. Everyone has their own way of doing it. You can search on this forum and find some great methods of organizing your work flow. I am just suggesting that with a 4-drive RAID 0, you would gain a lot in performance. The 4 HDDs would appear on your system as a single 4TB drive. Why not just have 3-4 major file folders on one drive to organize your data rather than physically storing those different types of files on separate drives (and lose the advantages of a RAID 0)?

Whatever you decide, it's not like it's irrevocable. Nowadays it's a lot easier to create RAIDs than ten years ago (my experience anyways). I know you understand the role of a speedy drive, otherwise you wouldn't be looking at 10,000/15,000RPM drives. Personally, I'd go for something with a good reputation for reliability and just 7,200RPM at 1TB each. The RAID is like getting free performance upgrade. Just the one big 'gotcha' that a single drive failure will wipe out all data across all RAID drives. There are other configurations that provide better risk management. So, you could do some benchmark testing of your own with the 4 individual drives, writing large files, rendering a typical project, etc. Take notes on the time it takes. Than create a RAID 0 and do the same tests and see what you get. Easy to convert the drives to RAID and back to non-RAID.

edit: Yes, you want the OS on a separate drive. SSD is great.

Mark, thanks for the great info. How would you compare the following 2 setups (if you can without actually testing them):

1. One solid state drive for OS and Apps, One 1TB 7200 RPM drive for raw footage and project files, another 1TB for media cache, and two additional 1TB drives in RAID 0 for exports.

2. One solid state drive for OS and Apps, and 4 TB 7200 RPM drives in RAID 0 for everything.

Sure, I'll take a SWAG at it. My money would be on #2 if based on performance.

Not sure how all the NLE's handle files. Premier may be similar to Vegas, which I use 99% of the time.

What you want your RAID for is the files that the NLE will be reading and writing to a lot.
If you want to save raw footage on a separate drive just to keep it near at hand, and then move selected clips over to the RAID that you actually plan to use in your project, then okay, you could do that without any drop in performance and would actually keep the RAID free of the usual clutter. I keep a large music and sound effects library on a stand-alone HDD myself. If you are talking about the raw footage as files that will be accessed frequently by the NLE during editing/exporting, etc, then I'd say it's better to keep them on the RAID. Your initial post was "... in order to have smooth playback and fairly fast renders when editing HD...". So, all my advice is geared to that. Hard drives are a bottle neck, the slowest performer in your editing system. The really serious people around here have some elaborate RAID setups for a reason, time is money.

Great info, thanks. If anybody has any other ideas, do share.

The really serious people around here have some elaborate RAID setups for a reason, time is money.

Do you think exporting a file would make that much difference if you have a raid setup? I can imagine that the less compression in a file (source and/or export file) the faster it could export, like when you are editing and exporting in a intermediate file I notice that exporting speed is limited by the harddrive speed, but when editing in a highly compressed format like avchd and exporting from that format to a h.264 format is not limited by the harddrive speed as far as I know.

Just to give an idea, I have a pretty basic setup on one of my pc's like one SSD drive for programs, one 7200rpm drive for video and one 7200 rpm drive for export.

The cpu is a I7 3770 and there is no separate GPU but one build in one the motherboard (a hd 4000) and it has 8gb of memory so nothing special. I use edius 6.5 but since we are talking about faster exporting with a raid set-up the type of NLE or software shouldn't matter.

If my source material is a HQ AVI 1080p 25p 135mbs file and if I export to a h.264 17mbs file in Edius (a copy for my clients) that is 5 times faster then realtime, so a one hour file is exported in 12 minutes.

If I build a blu-ray disc with tmpgenc authoring works 5 and my source material is the same intermediate hq avi file my export speed is 2 times realtime, so a one hour film is ready in 30 minutes.

Would a very fast raid system make the exporting part even more faster? Not so sure about that, not if the end file is highly compressed.

There are a number of issues in the original question, playback, rendering and exporting.

First, playback. That depends very much on the codec in use, the number of tracks in the time-line, the duration of clips before the next scene change and the sustained transfer rate of the disk I/O system.

I'm still in the process of writing an article about it, but the footwork has been done here: Tweakers Page (http://ppbm7.com/index.php/tweakers-page/84-disk-setup)

Second, rendering. This depends very much on the number of cores, the clock speed, the L3 cache, memory and the video card. It is not easy to say in generic terms where a possible bottle-neck may appear, but in general the more complex the source codec, the more impact the cores will have. The bigger the resolution (4K versus HD), the more strain is put on the CPU.

Exporting is mainly about CPU effectiveness. There are but a few effects that use the GPU when exporting. Apart from resizing, frame blending and blurring, exporting is the sole task of the CPU. The write time to disk is negligent in the overall picture. Writing a 37 GB export file to disk, the last step in the whole export process, will take around 225 seconds when using a single disk and around 22 seconds when using a very large and elaborate raid array. Both figures are not worth mentioning when you consider the total export time of such a large file.

To answer Natan's original question, I would say your priorities should be:

1. A 2011 socket X79 motherboard (because of the PCIe lanes available)
2. Preferably an i7-3930K+ hexa core CPU
3. At least 32 GB memory
4. GTX 760+ video card
5. SSD for boot and at least 3 7200 RPM HDD's

If the need arises, this will give you the option to add a raid controller in the future. Note that choosing a 1155 or 1156 platform will limit you to a quad core CPU, will limit you to a sustained transfer rate of effectively < 500 MB/s on your disk I/O system (unless you accept a video performance drop of 10 - 15%) and limits L3 cache to 8 MB. A 2011 platform gives you a hexa core CPU, can give you - with the right raid controller - a sustained transfer rate in excess of 4000 MB/s, gives you 12+ MB L3 cache.

Harm, thanks for the recommendations.

If I were to get, for example, the following machine:

Newegg.com - lenovo Erazer Intel Core i7 16GB DDR3 2TB HDD + 128GB SSD HDD Capacity Desktop PC Windows 8 X700 (57316913) (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883265537)

And switch out the video card, add 16 additional Gigs of Ram, and get 2 additional 2 TB 7200 RPM drives, would I be in pretty good shape according to your specs?

Natan,

I'm a big fan of DIY systems for several reasons.

1. It is easy and fun to build your own system and then, when you are finished, you can say: I've done it.
2. It is a lot cheaper than just buying an off-the-shelf system, which always lacks 'something'. In the case of your link of the Lenovo, it lacks a big tower, which constrains you in terms of future expansion, the PSU is rather minimal with only 625W, it comes with only 16 GB memory and as a default has the wrong video card.

If you want to get an idea how I went about planning my own system, look at Planning a NLE System (http://ppbm7.com/index.php/news/planning)

The alternative might be to buy - if you don't want to go the DIY route - from a specialized custom builder, that will ask about your requirements extensively and then make a proposal to fit your needs. I don't know if they are a sponsor, so I can't give you a link to their site, but Google for 'ADK Video Editing' and you will end up in Kentucky. Give Eric Bowen a call and tell him I sent you.

I'd probably go with a custom-built machine. Thanks for the recommendation. I also know of a few other sites that have gotten positive reviews like computerlx and a few others.

Harm, just another question on RAID configurations.

If I have a PC with the specs you describe, and the 4 hard drives are as follows:
128 SSD for OS and Programs
2TB 7200 HDD
2TB 7200 HDD
2TB 7200 HDD

In your opinion, would it be better to run the 3 HDDs with media, projects, and exports separated on each one (with NO RAID), or in a RAID 5 (or even 0 if backup isn't an issue) with all media elements in the same place?

Natan, once you decide on your specs go over to avadirect.com and build the system online for pricing. I think you will be pleasantly surprised. They are top-notch builders.

Natan, once you decide on your specs go over to avadirect.com and build the system online for pricing. I think you will be pleasantly surprised. They are top-notch builders.

Mark, thanks for that. I JUST found avadirect 10 minutes before you posted. It has rave reviews and great prices.

Natan,

The only raid configurations I would consider without a dedicated raid controller are raid0 or raid1, never raid5, because it is way too slow. With a dedicated raid controller ($$$) I would prefer raid3 with dedicated parity over distributed parity of a raid5.

So: Without a dedicated raid controller I would use single disks, given your number of available disks.

Harm,

And if I had a dedicated RAID controller, would the performance (playback in Premiere and render speed) of 3 2TB drives in RAID0 with all of the media elements together be better than separating the 3 drives?

Mark, thanks for that. I JUST found avadirect 10 minutes before you posted. It has rave reviews and great prices.

Natan, they have built 2 systems for me and I couldn't be happier. Comes with 3 years support which I used once and they were very responsive.

Harm,

And if I had a dedicated RAID controller, would the performance (playback in Premiere and render speed) of 3 2TB drives in RAID0 with all of the media elements together be better than separating the 3 drives?

There is no sense in using a dedicated raid controller when you are using a striped array, raid0. That is about equal to a striped raid0 array on a controller, so why waste $ 800+ on a dedicated controller? A dedicated controller only makes sense if you move to more disks and parity level arrays like raid 3/5 or 6.

A three disk raid0 from the mobo will give you a sustained transfer rate of around 450 - 550 MB/s, depending on the fill rate. It will drop to around 300 MB/s when your fill rate exceeds 70%. It is about three times faster than a single disk, but...

yeah, there is always a but...

a three disk raid0 increases the risk of complete data loss by a factor three over a single disk. When one disk fails, all your data are lost irretrievably and that is something I think you can afford with data that can be reconstructed, like media cache or previews, but not with the original media. Those data are too valuable to lose due to disk failure.

If you read my Planning guide and all of the following pages (there are a lot of them), you have seen I have covered data loss of my media with redundancy, allowing for up to 6 disks to fail without data loss, out of 24. So I can lose up to 25% of my disks without a serious problem. It slows down a bit, but no data are lost, it can all be reconstructed from the parity disks and hot-spares.

Maybe you want to read more about raids here: Adobe Community: To RAID or not to RAID, that is the question (http://forums.adobe.com/message/2397179#2397179)

Harm, the reason why think using a RAID 0 wouldn't be that risky for me is that, if one drive fails at any given time, I'll have lost at most about 2-3 hours of work (moreover, the work will have been based on notes I've written down and could easily do again). On the machine I'm describing, I'll be editing a 3-hour show down to one hour, and then exporting that hour plus several shorter clips. At the end of the day, I'll do a backup all of the exported clips. So, for me, if the performance of the 3 drives in RAID 0, even with all of the media elements in the same boat, is significantly faster than having the 3 drives separate (or even 2 drives in RAID 0 and the 3rd separate), it seems to me like it would be worth it given the type of work I'll be doing.

If I were editing short films or anything with hundreds of cuts, effects, color correction, etc. I would probably agree that this is too risky, but since I'm not doing that on this machine, it seems like the setup that improves performance outweighs a setup that improves redundancy. Any thoughts?

Do you think exporting a file would make that much difference if you have a raid setup?...

Would a very fast raid system make the exporting part even more faster? Not so sure about that, not if the end file is highly compressed.

Noa,
The OP didn't say what type of HD he was shooting, might be AVCHD, could be something else. Whether it helps with every aspect of video editing or just 80%, I can't see why anyone would not consider going with the fastest drive setup they could afford. I haven't done any benchmarks in a long time, but when I converted to a RAID on my desktop machine, I saw lots of improvement. And that was just a two-drive RAID. Besides the export process, there are lots of other file operations that move huge chunks of data on/off the hard drives, so any gain in speed in the transfer of those files is going to help.

BTW- if you go to the Adobe Community/Premier Pro/Hardware Forum/Discussions,
You'll find an article that gives some recommendations on how to distribute your files across various numbers of hard drives. For instance, if you have 5 hard drives, it's recommended to put your OS and programs on one drive and make the other 4 into a RAID for media, projects, media cache,previews, exports. It's all in the article "Generic Guideline for Disk Setup" by Harm Millard.

I do have several drives with import, export, backup, video data etc separated and in my case I don't see any benefit in having a raid setup, I can't imagine that converting avchd to a h.264 format would benefit in any way from raid. Uncompressed formats, sure, moving large amounts of data between drives, also sure, but for exports of highly compressed formats your better off just with separate single drives as your cpu or gpu will be doing all the work anyway and the drive speed won't be the bottleneck.

My current workflow of mainly avchd kind of formats is very fast as edius utilizes the build in gpu on the motherboard as well for exporting, I don't even have a build in gpu and only 8gb of memory. A fast raid system and a dedicated gpu card would not make a difference in my case either. Important is that you build your system around the format you will be editing and the nle you will be using, so every system could look totally different.

Mark,

I'm busy rewriting that Disk Setup article. I haven't finished it yet, but the footwork is here: Tweakers Page (http://ppbm7.com/index.php/tweakers-page/84-disk-setup)

It is more elaborate and explains more of the factors that influence disk setup, and will contain more up-to-date information.