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Recommended Video Editing System Specs

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Recommended Video Editing System Specs

Postby Chuck Engels » Tue Dec 11, 2007 11:17 am

Here are my suggestions for three very good video editing systems of varying price ranges.
You may already know that I prefer Dell brand computers and have been very happy with
my experiences in all aspects, from purchase to support.

I currently own 4 Dell computers, two of them for video editing, one top of the line
and a bargain basement model (used to be top of the line a few years ago).

My current Top of the Line system
Dell Precision 490; 2 x Xeon 3.0 Dual Core Processors, 4gb of 533mhz DDR2 RAM,
ATI Stealth 512mb Video, X-Fi ExtremeMusic Sound Card, 2 x 250gb SATA II ,
1 x 750gb SATA II

My Bargain Basement system
Dell Dimension 8400; Intel 3.0ghz 2.5gb of 533 DDR2 RAM, Nvidia Quadro 256 Graphics,
SoundMax Audio, 1 x 400gb SATA, 1 x 160GB SATA

I have left out the Quad Core CPUs for now, most software cannot take full advantage of the quad core.
Most software does take advantage of the dual core CPUs, and dual processors have been around
for a long time now so that makes sense also.

All of the systems below can be found at the Dell Outlet at great prices and in some cases you will have
a choice between Windows XP and Vista.

Top Of The Line System
Dell Precision 490 or similar

Processor(s)
2 x Intel Dual Core Xeon or 2 x Intel Core 2 Duo
2.8ghz or better

RAM
4GB

Hard Drives
2 x 250, 1 x 750 RAID 0

Video/Graphics Card
512 MB Video Memory that supports dual monitors (Nvidia or ATI),
GPU effects and transitions, and has DVI connections

Sound/Audio Card
Soundblaster X-Fi ExtremeMusic

Firewire
Preferrably a separate card and Onboard Firewire

USB
As many ports as possible to support all of the external drives you will need

DVD Burners
2 x DVD Dual Layer 16x +/- R, RW

Monitors
2 x 19" Flat panel Widescreen (DVI connections)

Digital Converter
Canopus 110 or Pyro Link for Analog Conversion

External TV Monitor
14" Toshiba or similar TV Monitor

Price Range
$1500.00 - $3000.00 USD



Middle Of The Road System
Dell XPS 420 or similar

Processor(s)
Core 2 Duo, Dual Core, Quad Core 3.0ghz or better

RAM
2GB

Hard Drives
2 x 500GB No RAID

Video/Graphics Card
256MB Video Memory that supports GPU effects and transitions
Dual Monitor Support with DVI connections is a plus

Sound/Audio Card[/b]
Soundblaster or similar

Firewire
Preferrably a separate card and Onboard Firewire

USB
As many ports as possible to support all of the external drives you will need

DVD Burners
2 x DVD Dual Layer 16x +/- R, RW

Monitors
Single or Dual 19" Flat Panel Widescreen

Digital Converter
Pyro A/V Link for Analog Conversion

External TV Monitor
14" Toshiba TV Monitor or similar

Price Range
$800.00 - 1499.00 USD


Bargain Basement System
Dell Dimension, Inspiron, or similar

Processor(s)
Intel 3.0ghz with Hyper Threading or Better
It is not hard to find a reasonbly priced system with a 2.0ghz Dual Core CPU
which would be even better than the 3.0ghz with HT

RAM
1GB

Hard Drives
2 x 250GB

Video/Graphics Card
256MB Video Memory and GPU Support

Sound/Audio Card
Onboard Audio - Sigma Tel or SoundMax

Firewire
Preferrably a separate Firewire card

USB
As many ports as possible to support all of the external drives you will need

DVD Burners
1 x DVD Dual Layer 16x +/- R, RW

Monitors
1 x 19" Flat Panel Widescreen

Digital Converter
ADS Pyro A/V Link for Analog Conversion

External TV Monitor
None

Price Range
$400.00 - $799.00 USD


Any of these systems will run Premiere Elements or even Premiere Pro CS3, the bigger the processor the faster everything will get done.
The difference in rendering times between the bargain basement unit and the top of the line system will be at least cut in half. Burning a
1 hour DVD on the bargain unit will take approximately 60 - 75 minutes, on the top of the line system burning the same DVD will take
approximately 10 - 20 minutes.

I have specifically left out much in the way of brands or models for hardware. I have my personal preferrences as do most of you. If you would
like a specific recommendation I would be happy to provide one, or at least tell you what has worked for me :)
1. Thinkpad W530 Laptop, Core i7-3820QM Processor 8M Cache 3.70 GHz, 16 GB DDR3, NVIDIA Quadro K1000M 2GB Memory.

2. Cybertron PC - Liquid Cooled AMD FX6300, 6 cores, 3.50ghz - 32GB DDR3 - MSI GeForce GTX 960 Gaming 4G, 4GB Video Ram, 1024 Cuda Cores.
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Re: Recommended Video Editing System Specs

Postby Paul LS » Tue Dec 11, 2007 4:18 pm

Just a comment on Quad Cores and editing applications making full use of them. I am just rendering a video to high definition MPEG2 in Vegas and it is using all four cores at 100%.... :shock: so equivalent to a 9.6GHz (4x2.4G) processor.
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Re: Recommended Video Editing System Specs

Postby Chuck Engels » Tue Dec 11, 2007 4:21 pm

That is amazing Paul, it would be nice to hear what the comparison is in Premiere Elements or Pro.
From what I have heard, Premiere Elements does not make use of all 4 cores but does really well with dual, dual core processors.
1. Thinkpad W530 Laptop, Core i7-3820QM Processor 8M Cache 3.70 GHz, 16 GB DDR3, NVIDIA Quadro K1000M 2GB Memory.

2. Cybertron PC - Liquid Cooled AMD FX6300, 6 cores, 3.50ghz - 32GB DDR3 - MSI GeForce GTX 960 Gaming 4G, 4GB Video Ram, 1024 Cuda Cores.
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Re: Recommended Video Editing System Specs

Postby Paul LS » Tue Dec 11, 2007 4:27 pm

I'll load up Premiere Elements/Pro on to the quad core machine and see how it performs.

Next step is to overclock the quad-core to 3.0GHz... apparently it can go to 3.0GHz fairly easily. With some effort they can be overclocked to even higher values... biggest issue will be cooling.
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Re: Recommended Video Editing System Specs

Postby Chuck Engels » Tue Dec 11, 2007 4:40 pm

Paul LS wrote:... biggest issue will be cooling.


In my new machine there are either 4 or 6 fans, one of them could fly a plane. A Bit noisy but if I wanted to I think it could get me where ever I want to go as long as I have a long enough extension cord :)
1. Thinkpad W530 Laptop, Core i7-3820QM Processor 8M Cache 3.70 GHz, 16 GB DDR3, NVIDIA Quadro K1000M 2GB Memory.

2. Cybertron PC - Liquid Cooled AMD FX6300, 6 cores, 3.50ghz - 32GB DDR3 - MSI GeForce GTX 960 Gaming 4G, 4GB Video Ram, 1024 Cuda Cores.
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Re: Recommended Video Editing System Specs

Postby Paul LS » Tue Dec 11, 2007 4:41 pm

:-D

Time to consider water cooling...
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Re: Recommended Video Editing System Specs

Postby Ken Jarstad » Tue Dec 11, 2007 5:53 pm

I'm using a $30 usd ARCTIC CPU cooler which allows my 3 GHz HT rig to use the ASUS auto-overclock system to 3.9 GHz. It has been working flawlessly for a year now. No noticable noise and much quieter than the stock unit. The Core 2 series should be easier to keep cool.
-=Ken Jarstad=-
Linux Kubuntu 20.04, DIY ASRock MB, Ryzen 3 1200 CPU, 16 GB RAM, GT-710 GPU, 250 GB NVMe, edit primarily with Shotcut
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Re: Recommended Video Editing System Specs

Postby VernonRobinson » Wed Dec 12, 2007 6:31 am

Paul LS wrote:I'll load up Premiere Elements/Pro on to the quad core machine and see how it performs.

Next step is to overclock the quad-core to 3.0GHz... apparently it can go to 3.0GHz fairly easily. With some effort they can be overclocked to even higher values... biggest issue will be cooling.


Paul,
I built a quad-core back in the summer. It seems to perform relatively well. I have a screwed up Prel Project where I was working on the Brady Bunch intro. It is 1.5 minutes long, 1371 frames. PrEL 3.0 says it takes approx 15 minutes to render. The only reason for mentioning it is that it drives all four cores to various levels of usage from approx 40% to high 80%. The recorded average is approx 65%.

I just tried to render the same project in PrEl 4.0. It drives all 4 cores to 100%. The stated time to render is approximately 2 1/2 minutes. Besides using the cores 10 100% it would seem that PrEl 4 also renders faster and seems to use more memory.

I am running Windows XP SP2, 4 gigs of ram, 640 MB nVidia 8000 GTS, 2.5 TeraBytes of storage in a Raid 0 configuration. System is housed in a Cooler Master Tower with (9) 120 mm cooling fans, and a Zalman CPU Cooler. Running all cores at 100% the CPU the max temp I have seen is 59.0 C.

Still wondering what is wrong with this PrEl project. It should take seconds to render instead of minutes. I guess I kept it so that others more intelligent than I could help diagnose it.

Finally, I have a motherboard that is supposedly easily overclockable and they provide utilities to help, but I have no knowledge of how to do it. I would be interested in your methods and results. My system has been stable since August, alas, even though it runs 24/7 I have not had time to do much editing. I hope to get some marathon sessions in this holiday.

Regards,
-Vernon
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Re: Recommended Video Editing System Specs

Postby John 'twosheds' McDonald » Wed Dec 12, 2007 8:20 am

Paul, I am planning to go down the overclock route - it is my first planned project for 2008. I have an Arctic Pro 7 cooler instead of the stock Intel one. Also my PC case has two 120mm fans fitted as case coolers. Pleased to hear that 3.0Ghz is readily achievable with the quad chip that I have. I'll set that as my target once I get started on the project. Core temperatures in my PC using Core Temp are showing at 50 - 54 with no load. If I run the Prime95 torture test the core temps rise to the low 60s with peaks at 65 (the ASUS probe software shows a processor temperature of around 50C)

Re PrEl and quad cores, I am still using PrElv2 and all four cores are used but at an average of around 60%-70%. I haven't got any info on PPro CS3 yet as I haven't really used it in anger.
AMD Ryzen 3900x 12C/24T, ASUS x570 mobo, Arctic Liquid Freezer ll 280, Win11 64 bit, 64GB RAM, Radeon RX 570 graphics, Samsung 500GB NVMe 980 PRO (C:), Samsung 970 Evo SSD (D:), Dell U2717D Monitor, Synology DS412+ 8TB NAS, Adobe CS6.
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Re: Recommended Video Editing System Specs

Postby Paul LS » Wed Dec 12, 2007 9:10 am

Twosheds... your processor is running a little hot there... 50-54C with no load. Mine runs at 32C with no load with the stock Intel fan... I use Everest to measure the temperatures and I can run a stress test at 100% processor load and the temperature maxes out around 51C.
It is a Q6600 with each core running at 2.4GHz. However it is one of the newer higher efficiency units that runs at about 10W lower power than the older versions.
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Re: Recommended Video Editing System Specs

Postby John 'twosheds' McDonald » Wed Dec 12, 2007 9:53 am

Thanks Paul. Maybe I'm getting false temperature readings. I'll check out Everest and see what that tells me.
AMD Ryzen 3900x 12C/24T, ASUS x570 mobo, Arctic Liquid Freezer ll 280, Win11 64 bit, 64GB RAM, Radeon RX 570 graphics, Samsung 500GB NVMe 980 PRO (C:), Samsung 970 Evo SSD (D:), Dell U2717D Monitor, Synology DS412+ 8TB NAS, Adobe CS6.
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Re: Recommended Video Editing System Specs

Postby Paul LS » Wed Dec 12, 2007 10:15 am

I have the Everest Ultimate edition... it tells you everything about your computer. The free home edition only gives a single CPU temperature... the ultimate version gives the temp of each core plus during the stress test test it plots it along with voltages, fan speeds etc.
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Re: Recommended Video Editing System Specs

Postby kodebuster » Wed Dec 12, 2007 10:39 am

You can look at my computer spec's in my signature.

I just picked up this system from hpshopping.com as a refurbished unit.

The price was $799, which I thought was very, very reasonable.

It's a Media Center model (8120n), found under their "Outlet Tab", here's the link:

http://www.shopping.hp.com/webapp/shopping/product_detail.do?storeName=storefronts&landing=outlet&category=Desktop%20PC&lanAttr=Computing&orderflow=1&product_code=GC674AAR%23ABA&catLevel=2

The only downside is I'm not too crazy about the video card, it's okay, but what I'd consider middle of the road (compared to other high end cards). But that's easy to upgrade, then I'll just sell the card that it came with.

Except for the vid card, everything else is quality built and assembled and very, very fast, just what the doctor ordered...
Intel i7Core Quad (i7-940) @ 2.93 Ghz, 12gig Mem 1066 MHz , 1gig Nvidia GeForce, 1TB HDD with Raid 0 (2x500), 3TB Storage
PE7, Vista-64, Sony DCR-DVD305 (MiniDVD)

If everything seems under control, then your just not going fast enough ~ Mario Andretti.
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Re: Recommended Video Editing System Specs

Postby John 'twosheds' McDonald » Wed Dec 12, 2007 3:16 pm

Paul, deviating a little from the 'Recommended System' thread so have started a new 'Overclocking' thread in Water Cooler.
AMD Ryzen 3900x 12C/24T, ASUS x570 mobo, Arctic Liquid Freezer ll 280, Win11 64 bit, 64GB RAM, Radeon RX 570 graphics, Samsung 500GB NVMe 980 PRO (C:), Samsung 970 Evo SSD (D:), Dell U2717D Monitor, Synology DS412+ 8TB NAS, Adobe CS6.
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Re: Recommended Video Editing System Specs

Postby Clayton » Thu Dec 13, 2007 9:53 am

Paul LS wrote::-D

Time to consider water cooling...


I have always worried about what would happen :sad5: if the cooling system sprang a tiny, tiny leak........ :angel10:
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