Decent Video Editing Machine Setup?

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halfracedrift

halfracedrift

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Basically, my dad's looking to get a video editing machine. Suggest what things I would need!

Things on his 'wanted' list:

+/- R/RW (Does anyone have an idea of what the + and - functions do?)
VIVO, minimum 128 mb video card. Should be geared more towards video editing.
1gig (or more) of DDR400 ram
160+ gig of HDD space. (Does anyone know how much space an hour of movie at 640*480 encoded in MPEG1, MPEG2, MPEG4 will take?)
A clear (clear as in colours, sharpness) 17'' LCD monitor.

Modify this list as you wish! Please go to www.anitec.ca and look there for prices. Thanks all in advance! Price cap is around $1500-$1600 CND
 

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there's a toronto based store called Canada Computers. I'm certain they'd mail some stuff to you. They've got the best prices I've seen in canada

Anyhoo, for your rig, I'd suggest a Radeon 9800 All In Wonder XT. It only costs a few bucks more and it's got all the video capture stuff included. Your HD could stand to be a bit bigger at 200 gigs but I think the 160 will be sufficient for now. Just make sure it's S-ATA.

Finding you a good LCD monitor thats good at color replication that also offers good refresh rates is very difficult. It's especially difficult to find them at a reasonable price. I'd suggest going old-school for a good flat screen CRT. I'd suggest the Samsung 765MB. My parents have a 753DF for their graphics computer at their shop and it's absolutely amazing. The 765 is just a few steps above and beyond :D.

By the way, don't buy anything till you check here for competitive pricing: http://ca.pricegrabber.com
 
For your questions, the +/- formats indicates compatibility. Most are now adopted to the + format, while the - format is mostly used for older DVD players. It's necessary to have a dual format for safety reasons, especially if you're doing group presentations!

All DVD players must sustain approx 10megaBIT (exact rate is 9.8Mbit) per second. Since DVDs play in a MPEG2 format, you can use this as a guide. Eight bits equal to one byte, so it's safe to say it needs a maximum of 1.2 megabytes per second. Now times 60 (to minutte), and times 60 again (to hour), you'll need a maximum of 4.5GB for an hour. In reality however, you can probably go 2 hours with that size. That's a lot of movies.

Your RAM slots supports dual channeling. Stick another 512mb RAM stick (same stick) into the blue slot, and you'll have one fast mofo.

For the hard drive, ALWAYS LOOK AT THE ACCESS TIME (usually in millisecond). Back then when editing, SCSI is the only way to go mainly because of its short access rate, but now S-ATA is a great alternative. You're looking for no more than 10ms.
 
OK. Newegg doesn't ship to Canada.. so ordering from them is just plain useless for me.. :(..

Adjust what you feel like and put it on here, thanks!
 

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Only a personal suggestion but get either a 52x cdrw drive or a combo dvd/cdrw drive (the ones that read dvd and burn cd). The reason is because it's extremely inconvenient trying to do disk to disk copies with just one drive.

Also, if it's possible, try getting yourself an additional 512 megs of ram.

Aside from that, you've got a powerhouse coming up.

By the way, if you can, spend an addional $50-60 on cooling. I've never been a fan of those OEM fans. They're always noisy as hell and don't have rpm control and such.

And if there's still room to spare, get a good PSU rather than the one that comes with your case. The cheapo ones die easily for some reason. My bro lost one within months of purchasing his computer and I lost mine just a year after purchasing.
 
So I'll need an upgraded PSU...
Cooling is adequate already at my stage though, right?

Why still more RAM? Isn't 1gig of DDR400 already considered alot? =\
 
Originally posted by halfracedrift
Cooling is adequate already at my stage though, right?

Why still more RAM? Isn't 1gig of DDR400 already considered alot? =\
Click to expand...

oooh, my bad - I thought it was just a single chip of 512 megs :p

the OEM Cooling is actually more than adequate because it was designed for that particular part. The problem is that it's noisy as hell and doesn't leave much room for overclocking. I only suggest this because I used to avoid using my desktop because of all the noise it made. A few nice heat sinks and fans kept the cooling the same but the noise was almost completely gone.
 
Correct me if I'm wrong, but overclocking is pushing your components beyond their designated point right? If so, if you already have a good fast system, why would you need to overclock it?
 
Believe me, seeing the numbers go up and up(ie., FSB) is such a rush. If you OCed you'd wonder why you didn't start earlier.

Especially on a P4 system. If you don't blast the poor CPU with like a billion volts of power you wont be able to hurt it. The P4 has built in thermal protection and will automatically clock itself down if it gets too hot. Pretty cool stuff.

I would go with a 2.8C P4. OC it to 1000MHz FSB 3.6GHz, mm. That's the most popular OC, too. It does it pretty easily.

I've got my little Athlon 1600+ at 2300+ speeds, with a much faster FSB than a 2300+ would have. :D
 
Probably finalized... for two months.. waiting for two months and then buying this exact spec computer. Comments?
 

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looks good but only 1 suggestion. After the 2 months is over, make certain to look around for better parts before you make the final purchase. After all, by the end of 2 months, prices will more than likely drop a bit. There are SEVERAL new DVD Burners coming up this month and a few companies have even just come up with 12x and dual layer burners. By that time, the 12x will be at a reasonable price.

also, try to get your hands on a cheap dvdrom or cdrom drive. It makes cloning cds a lot quicker and easier.
 
Two months have passed.

Raidmax Scorpio 868 with window, raidmax 420w dual fan Power Supply in Silver
$79.95
Liteon SOHW 832S - 8x DVD +/- R/RW Dual Mode & Dual Layer Retail(Black)
$122.95
Intel Pentium 4 3.0E GHz (Prescott) 1MB L2 cache 800FSB Retail
$297.95
Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 200G 8M 7200RPM SATA150 OEM
$199.00
Vantec ION 400W Dual Fan, SATA Ready power supply
$99.00
Samsung DDR400(PC3200) 512MB RAM * 2
$207.00
ATI All In Wonder 9800 Pro 128MB AGP 8X Retail
$389.00
MSI 865PE NEO2 FIS2R i865PE 800FSB Dual DDR400 audio/1394/lan/sata
$198.00

Total: $1592.85 CAD, $1196.82 USD (taxes excluded). After taxes, probably around $1823.81 CAD = 1370.36 USD (yes, Canadian taxes are ****ing insane) Trading the old PSU in for the Vantec ION one. (Don't trust PSUs that come with the case, unless PSUs which come with Raidmax are good)

Any new ideas/suggestions?
 
seems good... Try to get dual channel ddr if you can - ddr2 if at all possible. Oh, and try to get your hands on an AMD chip :)
 
since when do amd's run hot? I built my friend an AthlonXP 2500+ rig and lightly overclocked it to a 2700+. With stock cooling, the rig barely hits 47 degrees under high stress. I could have done it up to a 2800+ with no probs but I didn't know the guy's usage habits well enough so I didn't want to risk anything in the long run.
 
=\? What the fark?

My 2200xp+ NOT overclocked (and recently updated bios, cleaned heatsink and fan) runs at NO LOAD 55C. A serious case of: What the fark?!

Anyway, I just found out my dad doesn't really need an AIW.

Main forms of video source are old VHS's and a DV cam which connects via IEEE1394
 
Yea, their older heat sinks didn't really get the job done really well. The fans were also a bit noisy. I've got a 1900+ Palomino which is the hottest of the AthlonXP line, it ran something like 52 degrees on stock heat sink under stress. I later upgraded to a thermaltake SilentBoost and that brought it down to the 45 range.
 
Ah. We can blame heatsinks for that.. *ding* I've actually felt the heatsink while I was cleaning it, and it took about a good 15 minutes for it to completely cool down (to room temp where it didn't feel hot). When I cleaned it, it looked more like radiator fins to me.. =\

Dual channel = ? Two sticks of ram combined into one and uses one slot?
 
halfracedrift
Dual channel = ? Two sticks of ram combined into one and uses one slot?
Click to expand...
that's the basic concept behind it :). I think the primary benefit is that it's capable of sending and recieving data at the same time
 
Raidmax Scorpio 868 with window, raidmax 420w dual fan Power Supply in Silver
$79.95
Liteon SOHW 832S - 8x DVD +/- R/RW Dual Mode & Dual Layer Retail(Black)
$122.95
Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 200G 8M 7200RPM SATA150 OEM
$199.00
Samsung DDR400(PC3200) 512MB RAM * 2!
$207.00
MSI 865PE NEO2 FIS2R i865PE 800FSB Dual DDR400 audio/1394/lan/sata
$198.00
Intel Pentium 4 2.8C GHz 512K 800FSB Retail
$245.95
ATI All In Wonder 9600XT 128MB AGP 8X Retail
$249.95
Samsung 765MB 17" Magic Bright 1600x1200 flat monitor
$275.00
Tisonic Mega Power EPS 460W power supply ATX EPS 12V with dual fan
$69.00

Total : $1646.80 CAD

Dad insisted on Intel. Oh well. This is final. Going to add a few case fans later on.
 
errr...why are you downgrading to the R9600? It's an amazing card still but...the 9800 is better

otherwise, looks awesome dude 👍
 
emad
errr...why are you downgrading to the R9600? It's an amazing card still but...the 9800 is better

otherwise, looks awesome dude 👍
Click to expand...
Because the 9600XT is the shiat. :dopey: AIWs are cool too...

Looks good.👍 Be sure and let us know how it goes.
 
Darnit.

They just informed us that they do not have that motherboard in stock anymore, it's been cut! :angry:
The replacement is a 'so called' identical one but a newer model with Gigabit Lan (which is quite useless to me anyway), called the 865PE FISR.
 

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