Cheapest computer to edit HDV
 

I own PC with Celeron 2 Ghz, 400 bus, 128 MB RAM. I have Vegas 3.0, 1600x1280 17" monitor.

I don't want upgrade my computer. I want to buy new complete solution later.

Until then, can I simply upgrade Vegas software to 5.0? How well would it work with Sony HDV footage? Would work at all?

My friend has HP with 1200 Mhz Athalon, 128 MB RAM. He wants know if and how would that work. Would anyone know?

Radek, both machines will be crawlin'....not a very good experience. Remember 1080i HDV has 4.5X more pixels than SD - you need to be realistic about machine performance.

I'd say there's no point in trying to edit HDV on either of the computers described in the first two posts. If you're serious about getting into HDV you should be prepared to spend some money to get started, including at least $1000 or so for a good 3+ GHz PC. If that's simply not an option, your best alternative for now would be to downconvert HDV footage to DV when capturing to your computer, which yields very nice widescreen standard-definition video--better than most DV cameras can offer.

So as of today, 4-10-05, what's a good, solid entry level computer, hard drive, etc. if someone wants to edit a full length project ( 2 hours) from an FX1? What kind of cost are we looking at, compared to even a couple of months ago?

Keep in mind that HDV is a new market that requires massive
computing power. Nothing will be cheap in the HDV market at
this point in time. That includes camera's, computing systems
and output systems (if you want to maintain HD).

In my opinion budget/cheap and HDV do not go hand in hand
as of this time. Perhaps it is better to look at a high quality
other system or work in DV first with your HDV camera if you
cannot afford a system to actually edit it etc.?

Keep in mind you may need additional software etc. as well.

Yet a high performance PC is not that expensive these days. Aspect HD will work very well on a Dell Dimension 8400 with 1GB and a monitor for under $1200. 3Ghz+ CPUs are now common place. True a new PC maybe required but not all HDV solutions require an expensive dual processor workstation.

Basically look at each HDV software/hardware vendor's recommended system requirements. Some only require a modern but average desktop. If the product's features match your needs then you know the type of PC you need.

David,

I was just looking at the specs recommended for Connect HD. Can you tell me why you recommend an FX Athlon and just a 2.8 GHz P4 with HT. The price difference is quite marked (£500 against £150). My current machine is Athlon 3200 with 3 Gb RAM with 4 x 160Gb, 1 for programs and a scratch and two mirrored for data. I am going to be upgrading the processor (need to build a couple of less powerful ones so treating myself to the newer things :) ).

Can you advise to which processor works best at specific price points - I don't think I can stretch to an FX though.

Many thanks

Chris

I would recommend anyone looking at getting into HDV editing take a look at Adam Wilt's article:

http://www.dv.com/news/news_item.jht.../2005/wilt0505

He explains HDV editing pretty thoroughly as well as the pitfalls and work arounds - as well as the computing requirements.

Chris,

Your current system is fine. Please download the trial to see for yourself.

The Mac Mini with it's entry-level RISC processor, should be able to edit HDV with iMovie. That thinsgs costs around US$500! The intermediate codec and the transcoding are a bit of a drag. Still, it seems to work, and without the need for extra software! So, judging by the posts I have seen, this would be the cheapest HDV editing solution currently available hands down.

If you add FCP and some extra software to the mix, it continues to be quite a bang for the buck. But FCP doesn't handle HDV natively yet so it requires some workarounds and extra steps, which in the case of iMovie are built-in.

Actually, the Adam wilt article was a bit off base on some things and left out some critical information about distribution options, but I suppose it had some good info too.

Regarding the Mac Mini, it may be one of the cheapest ways to do something with HDV footage, but not very much compared to what you can do on more powerful computers. Better to take David's advice and download the Cineform demo, since you already have a functional PC. To edit HDV effectively and encode to currently available delivery formats, you need all the processing power you can afford on either platform, regardless of what the "minimum specs" may be.

Makes sense. If you have a business built on video, the "Cheapest computer to edit HDV" will not do the job, same for DV, same for audio and so on. However since the subject of the thread is "cheapest" and not "best" I thought it worth mentioning. For someone on a tight budget who wants to learn some basic editing techniques, I think the Mini has no competition. I walked a friend with no experience in NLE through it's use the other day and it just rocks.

"For someone on a tight budget who wants to learn some basic editing techniques, I think the Mini has no competition. I walked a friend with no experience in NLE through it's use the other day and it just rocks."

I haven't seen iMovie so I can't judge how easy it might be to use, but you can buy a complete PC with monitor for less than a bare Mac Mini, and then take your pick of several reasonably-priced editing programs. It's funny to see how good Apple is at generating buzz over things which aren't necessarily that impressive, even if they are somewhat clever.

> but you can buy a complete PC with monitor for less than a
> bare Mac Mini, and then take your pick of several reasonably-
> priced editing programs

I think not for HDV, which is the subject of this thread.

iMovie is VERY easy to use, but it's simple interface deceives as to it's inner workings which, thanks to the QuickTime architecture and some very nice code that Apple bought from Macromedia, works very well. I have tried using Microsoft's equivalent on XP and it kept crashing and seemed to demand a much faster computer for previewing (it was 2 GHz box I think). Whereas iMovie works fine on my 400 MHz G4. Of course you can't compare gigahertz because RISC and CISC and the OSes are so different...

... oh let's not turn this into a platform war ok? If someone can give a detailed quote for a less expensive HDV-capable editing workstation, just show us the numbers, please. I'm all for it, whether it runs on BeOS or whatever.

Now who remembers BeOS?

Yes, fair enough that PCs don't currently come with software which can attempt to capture and edit HDV, and there isn't currently a low-priced PC software package with HDV capability. So for the absolutely lowest-priced option to play around with HDV I guess the Mac Mini takes the prize, but I gather from user reports that this wouldn't give you a very effective workflow.

To do any serious HDV work you'd want at least the base-model iMac for $1299. For that price I could buy a 3 GHz Dell (<$799) and add Edius Pro 3 ($499) to get real-time HDV capture and editing. But neither of these setups is really what you'd want for professional HDV editing, for which the correct question is how much can you afford to spend, not what's the cheapest approach.

Kudos to Apple for incorporating HDV support into their entry-level editing software. It'll be interesting to see what they offer for professional HDV work next week, about a year and a half after there were good HDV solutions for PCs.

:-)

Hi,
Is a 1.8 Ghz Dual G5 ($1999) powerful enough for HDV editing (captured from a Sony Z1)? Also, would I need any additional hardware cards for real-time capture/editing?

I read at a different thread that Apple doesn't support HDV. Does this mean that I won't be able to edit HDV content from a Sony Z1 on a Mac?

Are the Canopus Edius cards only for PCs? Or are they required for the Apples as well?

ritesh

A 1.8GHz dual processor G5 is powerful enough for HDV editing captured from a Sony Z1. You won't need any additional hardware cards for realtime capture. You should add as much RAM as you can, however. Buy the RAM from newegg, Crucial or whoever's the cheapest at ramseeker.com . . . don't pay Apple's RAM prices, and don't fall for the warranty scare tactic. RAM will carry its own warranty and third party RAM won't void your Apple warranty.

For editing, it would be nice (but not absolutely essential) to add a Blackmagic Design card so that you could connect to an HD capable broadcast monitor. Fortunately for you, FCP has a feature that lets you use your computer monitor as a broadcast monitor. It's not the same thing (it'd be better to work with a broadcast monitor) but if you don't have the money in your budget for a $2000 PCI-X card and a $1500-3500 HD broadcast monitor, well it's a decent (and cheap) solution.

Please take a look at Apple's site. They've added native HDV support to FCP, among other features.

Murad, Thanks for assuring me that the Macs will support HDV. I presume this is a recent development.

The Blackmagic card & HD monitor are way beyond our budget right now.
We want to start with a Sony Z1 ($5k) & a 1.8G Dual G5 ($2k), with a 17/19" monitor. Will Add-on later.

Software: FC Express HD ($300)
Hopefully, both the FC Express & Z1 can work in DV & HDV modes, depending on our requirement.

What other software can I use to work on HDV on a Mac? Preferably cheaper than the FCP.

Pinnacle LE??

It does appear that PCs (P4 3.0G+, 512GB RAM...) offer cheaper options, along with the variety of software available. Yet, I am inclined towards Macs due to their stability. My P4 PC crashes often with basic applications and interrupt conflicts. Or are there any alternate OS for PCs other than Win?

ritesh

I know it's not what the original poster asked for, but to be honest many PC people won't be buying a whole new machine to edit HDV. My friend this month upgraded his DV-editing machine by simply adding a Pentium 4 3.2 processor ($215 at Newegg), an extra 120GB drive ($39 at Microcenter) and Premiere's free 1.5.1 plugin - and he's away laughing with some HD-1 footage I gave him to try out!

> What other software can I use to work on HDV
> on a Mac? Preferably cheaper than the FCP.

iMovie. It's free and comes included with every new Mac.

I realise that it doesn't appear to be a smart decision to invest in a whole new system for HDV editing, when cheaper options like upgrading my P4 are available. Our plan is to setup an audio-video studio, which can handle inputs from the Z1 as well as a Korg Triton (with Mixer), and handle relevant software. Also, I'd like to keep the virus away (thanks to my internet connection) and work on a rock stable system (unlike the W2000 on my PC which crashes often). Hence the desire for a separate system.

Thanks for the info on the RAM for the Apple. I suppose a 1.8Ghz Dual G5 with 2 GB RAM is preferable to a 2Ghz Dual G5 with 1GB RAM.

Is the standard 80GB (standard with the 1.8 Dual) HDD (partitioned appropriately) suffficient, or should I invest in additional HDD?
SATA/RAID drives??

ritesh

Hi Ritesh,

Your last post seems somewhat difficult for me to understand. If you will go dor a Mac you have the low-end inexpensive option of the mini, which does not have dual processors and only has a single FireWire bus. Because of that, you should try to get it with as large a hard disk as possible because you con't want to use the Firewire bus for video and a hard disk at the asme time. It CAN be done but it will slow you down a bit. With the G5 towers, you can do well with the 80GB and when they run out you can add external FW800 drives. Still, it makes sense to get as much disk space as you can afford when you are to be working with video anyhow.

Still, we are getting quite off-topic. You can buy a mini and edit HDV with it out of the box, it's probably the least expensive HDV editing solution available, and then you can add FCP, RAM and change the internal hard disk as your needs grow.

Ritesh, you can never have enough money, RAM or hard drive space. Also, it's good advice to always keep your media / capture scratch on a separate drive from your OS. Partitioning does not count. Partitioning on Macs does not give you any advantage.

As for the dual 2 with 1GB RAM or dual 1.8 with 2GB RAM, go for the former because you can add RAM later but you'll be stuck with those CPUs.

I agree with Ignacio's comment about the Mac mini. Connecting a FW hard drive and using it as your media drive (leaving the internal drive for the OS) is a good idea. You'll need 1GB RAM in the mini to handle HDV editing, however. The minimum requirements for HD editing in FCP 5 are a single or dual 1GHz processor(s) and 1GB RAM. Of course for iMovie 5, you don't have to get 1GB RAM in your mini, but it wouldn't hurt.

I suppose iMovie 5 and Final Cut Express will be fine for editing HDV material that ultimately goes out on standard def. PAL, but if you want to maintain absolute sharpness / clarity / resolution (which matters when you save your HD masters) you'll want to avoid the Apple Intermediate Codec and instead stay in HDV (in other words, go for FCP 5).

I (potentially) have a similar production plan in mind as far as shooting HDV using the Sony Z1 and outputting PAL (for broadcast in India). It's not solid yet so we'll see if the deal works out.

How about a refurb dual 1.8GHz (around $1600-1700) as your starting point?

Take a look at this (highly compressed) clip from something I shot (for fun) this past Saturday:
http://homepage.mac.com/tvwriter/.Mo...bla_HD_720.mov

> I agree with Ignacio's comment about the Mac
> mini. Connecting a FW hard drive and using it
> as your media drive (leaving the internal drive
> for the OS) is a good idea.

Ahh great that you agree but that's not what I meant. I think it's not a good idea to use storage on the same bus as capturing and monitoring, and the internal hard disk bus is much faster than Firewire. Thus I reckon it's a good idea to get the biggest built-in hard disk you can get for the mini and work off it. If you have a single drive --which most likely is the only way with the mini anyway-- there is little benefit in partitioning it. But it's quite ok to run the OS and video files on the same drive. Remember, this is HDV, not uncompressed. If you want to partition it and keep it tidy, go ahead.

It's a common practice to keep the OS and video files on seperate physical drives when possible. Some people use partitions because it gives the same feeling of security, but I don't think that makes much sense. The safe thing to do is to make a backup of your system that can be reinstalled. When I get my next mini or Powerbook, I plan to use a free tool (don't remember the name right now) to create a clone of the OS and apps, and update it whenever I run software update or install new software. Of course important files also need to be backed up regularly, for this I have an external FW HD. Thus, if the system goes wrong, I will be able to use the clone to reinstall the system in no time.

I meant that I agree that a Mac mini is a great low-cost solution but I wanted to add my advice about using a FW drive for media storage. :)

I've had no trouble at all using the same FW bus for capture and storage, chained from camera to FW drive to Mac. I've had no data loss or dropped frames (with the rare exception of tape dropouts, which has to do with the tape and not the FW chaining).

I like your OS backup strategy. The application you're thinking of is probably Carbon Copy Cloner.

Anyway what do you think of the tabla clip? I want to tape that guy again in a controlled environment. I had no input on the lighting, for example, and I was stuck about 120 feet or 40 meters away from the stage, and that shot is zoomed all the way in (10x on my HD10) from where I had to put my tripod.

> I've had no trouble at all using the same
> FW bus for capture and storage, chained
> from camera to FW drive to Mac. I've had
> no data loss or dropped frames (with the
> rare exception of tape dropouts, which has
> to do with the tape and not the FW chaining).

Oh yes. It works. Been there, done that. However you can get a small performance increment by using a faster bus for the disk where your video, audio and project files live. This seems especially true when using a lot of additional audio files in an FCP project.

I get what you're saying, but wouldn't it be even better, at that point, to have separate and dedicated FW drives for video and audio? I know from experience that it makes a big difference in DVD authoring to have one drive for video assets, another drive for audio assets and a third drive set as the destination for built projects (all, of course, distinct from the boot drive).

How about the tabla clip? I know the sound is bad and the video noise was amplified by the web compression. I mean, you don't have to like it.

"I suppose iMovie 5 and Final Cut Express will be fine for editing HDV material that ultimately goes out on standard def. PAL, but if you want to maintain absolute sharpness / clarity / resolution (which matters when you save your HD masters) you'll want to avoid the Apple Intermediate Codec and instead stay in HDV (in other words, go for FCP 5). "

I think we'd want to see some comparisons of quality results for those two options before leaping to that conclusion. If AIC is properly designed it should be better than native HDV for editing purposes, since HDV is an inherently lossy editing format. But I suppose if you're making relatively simple edits and outputting back to an HDV camera then staying in HDV makes some sense.

I agree about the need to run some tests, but I have my doubts about the efficacy of AIC. I've been using DVCProHD as my intermediate codec.

Is this specific enough?
 

Here is a system we have built a couple of times for HDV editing, it is a solid, stable, and fast system for cheap (prices are from NewEgg):

1) Rosewill TU-155 Case w/ 400W Power Supply - $49.99
2) Gigabyte GA-8IP775-G Motherboard - $68.00
3) Intel Pentium 4 530J CPU - $179.00
4) (2) Rosewill 512MB DDR400 - $35.99 each - $71.98
5) Rosewill Radeon 9200SE Dual-Head AGP Video Card (128MB) - $39.99
6) Samsung SpinPoint SATA HD (120GB for Boot) - $85.00
7) Maxtor DiamondMax 10 (300GB, 16MB Buffer for Video) - $200.00
8) Samsung 16x DVD+/-RW w/ Dual Layer support - $49.99
9) Adaptec 3-port Firewire Card - $37.00
----
$780.95

Keep in mind this is not barebones, 1GB memory, 420GB total hard drive space (and that Maxtor drive with the 16MB buffer is smokin fast), 3GHZ P4, etc. If you wanted to skimp on some of the components you could go much cheaper, but this is an example of a very capable, stable system for cheap.

And for you Mac people, it is actually a pretty nice looking system as well :)

Ben

Nice one, Ben!

Further, I would argue that 1) building such a system from those type of components, 2) starting off with a fresh install of XP SP2, and 3) taking sensible precautions with any internet activity will just about guarantee you have an entirely a "rock solid" system - in part because you can escape the bloat of the extra software that creeps in whenever you buy a more expensive pre-installed system.

After a recent discussion regarding AIC quality issues in another thread, I'm now convinced that it is not currently a suitable solution for professional HDV editing work. Apparently Apple botched the design of AIC, which is unfortunate for Mac users because that means they'll be stuck editing HDV in the sluggish "native" codec, or taking the time to convert their HDV footage to DVCProHD.

So it would definitely not be a good idea to do HDV editing on a Mac Mini, and we're back to the fact that a decent HDV editing setup (including software) is going to run about $1500 and up on either platform. This also applies to the system described by Ben Buie, which doesn't appear to include either the cost of a licensed copy of Windows or the cost of HDV-capable editing software. Add those two items and you're up to at least $1400 by my calculations, and probably more depending on what software you buy.

Hi,
I apologise for not being able to reply to my previous posts. And thanks for all the info provided.

Initially I was thinking about a 1.8Ghz G5 Dual PowerMac for editing. I am downgrading, and would like to know if a 1.8 Ghz G5 iMac (1GB RAM, 160 GB HDD) would be sufficient for HDV editing. I intend to start with the HDV Express. Source for HDV is a Z1.

Do all Macs have the AIC problem as mentioned in another post?

Regards,
Ritesh Krishnamurthy

You can use my Commodore 64.

Ritesh, go to www.hdforindies.com, read the FAQ good starting point for HD/HDV and macs.

Pete

AIC is inherently flawed, so it doesn't make a difference if you're on an iBook or a dual-processor 2.7GHz Power Mac G5.

I've gotten good results by transcoding HDV material from its raw transport stream files to DVCProHD, and then editing in Final Cut Pro using DVCProHD. Use Virtual D-VHS to capture and MPEG Streamclip to transcode.

Get Virtual D-VHS from the FireWire SDK (it's in the Developer section of Apple's site). Get MPEG Streamclip by looking it up at versiontracker. You'll need the QuickTime MPEG playback component ($20) and QuickTime Pro might be useful too ($30). For the DVCProHD codecs, I think you;d need FCP to get it, unless someone has figured a way to install those codecs without FCP.

yeah i think this would be best...especially if you're editing for television broadcast, its already almost a TV. who needs a graphical interface for editing?? a text readout is more than sufficient.

just pretend you're one of those guys on the matrix that could read the code as it scrolled.

Hi,
With today's news from Apple on their transition, I am exploring PC options. Ben Buie's PC system seems very affordable.

What are the various software available for editing HDV (from a Z1)?

Anything equivalents to FCP Express to start-off with?

Thanks,
Ritesh Krishnamurthy

A PowerPC based Mac purchased today will still be officially supported by Apple 5 years from now. Developers will have an easy time issuing software for both x86 and PPC Macs. Apple isn't going to license Mac OS X to PC makers and it will not be installable on regular x86 PCs. Even if someone figures a way to crack OS X and get it to install on a Dell, you'd have to question the stability and reliability of such a hypothetical system, and in a production environment those are risks not worth taking.

Anyway, there are plenty of good options for low cost HDV editing on the PC side, which I don't know well enough to give any guidance, but I wish you well in whichever decision you make.