Do I need a raid for editing HDV?
 

I'm putting together an upgrade for a friends computer. I've ordered a Pentium dual core 2.5ghz cpu, 2 gb of DDR 2 pc6400 memory, and an asus socket 775 mainboard.

The question is, does he really need a raid to use Adobe Premier Pro 2 with HDV? He has a sata II 400gb 7200rpm disk besides his boot disk.

thanks
Billy

Depending on your software, you may not *need* it, but it will probably make your life easier. But you should also look at your CPU and Memory, because I think what you've listed is seriously underpowered for HDV.

Check out the minimum requirements for the software you anticipate using, take them seriously and go "one louder."

Lots of good advice over on the editing forums... check them out for recommendations as well.

Hi

You do NOT need a raid system to edit HDV. HDV has the same bitrate as DV, 25Mbps. There should be no problems using any SATA disk for HDV as they can deliver data much faster than HDV requires. Save the money for a raid system and put it on CPU or memory. My last computer was a 3,2GHz Pentium (single core, Hyperthreading) with 1GB of memory and I had Adobe Premiere 2 and it worked fine. Depending on your demands a dual core CPU will do well, but consider a quad core or perhaps the new Intel i7 processors if you have the money. At least 2 GB memory. I also recommend Premiere 3 as this version handles 2+ cores better than Premiere 2.

Regards,

/Bo

Thanks for those responses.

Adobe Premiere Pro 2 is the software, for creative use, not professional bookings. Is that what you mean?
The cpu is a 2.5ghz Pentium Dual Core, 2mb cache - it could run with a gentle overclock maybe @ 2.8ghz
The mobo is an Asus P5KPL-AM board with Intel G31 chipset.
The memory is 2 x 1gb Corsair DDR2 PC2-8500 cas 5 dominator sticks.

I know that it isn't going to break any records, but I'm just hoping that it will run - though maybe with rendering periods...

Premiere is pretty notoriously unstable. I really think your friend will be seriously contemplating suicide trying to use Premiere, especially version 2, with that setup.

You might want to consider adding the plug-in Prospect HD from Cineform to ease the burden on your CPU. Then you might be able to use that chip to edit smoothly. Otherwise, I think the demands of native m2t HDV will overwhelm that chip.

But the trade-off with Prospect is much larger file sizes, which is why a large fast RAID might help.

Never, ever, try to overclock an editing machine. You're in for a world of hurt. And 2GB total RAM is way light. As someone who's grappled with Premiere's lousy memory handling I can tell you this from experience.

Just my .02...

thanks for 2 cents Adam. I have no experience with an edit rig for HDV.

Quote:
"And 2GB total RAM is way light. As someone who's grappled with Premiere's lousy memory handling I can tell you this from experience."

I'll second that...

It's for a 32 bit windows XP rig. Will it handle much more memory than that?

If you install a total of 4GB, XP will use up to about 3.6GB of that. You do want as much memory as you can throw at Premier.

At least a couple of times a week I contemplate an upgrade to 64 bit just for access to more memory.

But if Premiere is only 32 bit, does it really help to have a 64 bit machine?

Probably not, but I'm going to try it anyway. Mostly it's to prepare to CS4, which can handle more memory even though it's a 32-bit app (lots of info on that in the editing forums here and over at the Adobe forums).

But even before that, I'm hoping that by going 64-bit and adding a bunch more memory, that'll allow Premiere to use the maximum it's able to, without interference from the OS and other apps all fighting over a measly 4GB.

Here is my system and it still seems unstable and slow for editing/effects.

NVIDIA nForce 280i SLI board
Intel Quad Core 2 2.66GHz
NVIDIA GTX 260 216 Core GPU
8 Gigs RAM
Vista Home Premium 64
1 TB HD Drive

As I said even with that, it seems slow (at least to me). When it comes to HD editing, it's "Go big or go home", hahaha.

Supposedly it can. Not for PP specifically, but with say, 8GB of RAM you can hack PP to use up to 3GB and have 5GB left over for AE, PS or whatever. On a 32 bit system with the hack PP will probably never get to use the full 3GB since the OS always wants its share first.

I'm in mac land, so it's a little different, but not too different. Just have a second internal drive be a SATA drive for video footage only and you will be fine. maybe a 3rd SATA drive for loops, music and final export projects so you can wipe your video drive every so often. Eventually moving other footage to cheap firewire or god forbid USB2 drives (slower than firewire 400 no matter what anyone says, half the bandwidth for firewire 400)

Are you doing 1080i HDV or 720p? 1080i is more demanding. 720p is a snap, (also renders in about half the time of 1080i downconverted to DVD)

If you were doing DVCPRO-HD or maybe even XDcam, you might want a RAID, but simple cuts no problem.

Are you doing more than 2 or 3 layers of hd footage on top of each other?

In my experience, modern hard drives are plenty quick for all forms of HD editing outside of uncompressed.

The new Seagates get 118 MBps, that is plenty of bandwidth.

I have an Intel Quad 9450 using Edius and I can edit everything including the 100Mbps Flash XDR files from a single drive.

Now this is taking into account one drive per camera.

If I start stacking clips from the same camera (drive) in multicam the system gets bogged down.

This is where a RAID might help, or it might not...