Editing on a Shoe String.

roy wood · Post by **roy wood** » Sun Jun 25, 2006 11:09 pm

Hi all I've been using a P3 600 1gb ram 80gbHdd using VS7 which although limited has given me the 'Bug'. I now want to build a better machine just for Vid editing but I have to keep the cost down so I'm planning to buy new but slightly dated components from Ebay etc.
I was hoping for some advice on the specs for an adequate macine that would suffice. Mainly proccesor type & speed Mobo requirements a reasonable graphics card, internal/external Hdd sizes and any additional info that you feel would be useful. Thanks Roy

sjj1805 · Post by **sjj1805** » Sun Jun 25, 2006 11:59 pm

You need to make sure that whatever you buy or build meets the minimum system requirements. They are listed in this post:
From Camcorder to DVD

Then anything you can obtain which is higher than those minimum requirements is a bonus. Get the best of whatever your pocket can afford.

A good place to get things rather cheaply - and they include guarantees - are 'Computer Fairs' You can find them by doing a Google Search.
the one's for my part of the country are here:
http://www.computermarkets.co.uk/

Post by **Ken Berry** » Mon Jun 26, 2006 12:14 am

If you look at my system button below, you will see my set-up. I built this computer from parts bought at a computer fair here in Canberra 18 months ago. All up, it cost around 500 pounds (A$1400) at that time. Similar components are still on the market here, though the price has fallen. Mind you, I have no idea of what relative prices might be like in the UK.

You probably wouldn't need the 2GB RAM that I have either, though I would still recommend 1GB -- and in any case, RAM is relatively cheap these days. I also have a number of hard drives. That is really up to you. But I would recommend you either get two -- one relatively small as your system drive for programs, and another larger one (at least 200GB) for video. Or else a single large one partitioned into two drives -- though in terms of not making a single drive have to thrash back and forth between the program and the video, the two drive option is to be preferred.

My computer, while by no means any longer top of the line, is still quite a powerful video editor and does an excellent job. I also have to say that maybe I am lucky, and I have never had the problems others seem to have with Video Studio on it -- which in essence has been mostly VS9 and more recently VS10. So depending on your budget, you might want to be thinking of something along these lines as a decent middle of the road computer...

PeterMilliken · Post by **PeterMilliken** » Mon Jun 26, 2006 12:49 am

Ken Berry wrote:Or else a single large one partitioned into two drives -- though in terms of not making a single drive have to thrash back and forth between the program and the video, the two drive option is to be preferred.

I might be wrong on this - but if you have enough RAM then you won't get disk thrashing i.e. if you keep your progam/application on one partition (c: ) and all your video files (project, temporary files etc etc) on another partition (d: for example) then once the rendering portion of the code loads into memory then it won't be swapped out - unless there is insufficient memory for the application code and the video information at the same time. If you follow the minimum recommended system from ULead then you should be assured that you have the minimum (RAM) configuration to avoid disk thrashing.

For example, I have 2G RAM (like Ken) but a 100 G drive that I have partitioned into c: (20 G), d: (20G) and e: (60G). I keep VS on c: and all my video editing files on e: (including any temporary buffers that VS want to use - see the Preferences tab in VS for this location). I don't get any disk thrashing even though I only have one physical drive.

Naturally, if you attempt to run other applications at the same time then the operating system will attempt to share resources amongst the applications and your VS session will most likely get swapped out to "virtual" memory i.e. a certain amount of hard drive space set aside for the virtual memory (usually set at twice the size of physical memory). Then you will almost certainly see disk thrashing - unless you have enough memory to cater for the extra application memory requirements.

I quite happily edit (single hour!) videos using this configuration - I admit that at times I do also connect an external 60G drive - but I use this when I am editting multiple projects.

So you really don't need scads of hard drive space - note that my d: drive described above is used to hold various data files that I use for other applications - so in terms of a VS dedicated installation it is not used, so you could get away with an 80G hard drive (partitioned as 20/60) - believe it or not, it is actually becoming difficult to purchase an 80G drive here in Australia - the stores are starting to avoid stocking them because people are asking for higher capacity, so you might be able to pick up an 80G drive for a good price.

Peter

sjj1805 · Post by **sjj1805** » Mon Jun 26, 2006 1:21 am

Roy,
To try and clarify what Ken and Peter are both explaining to you, dependant upon the size of your shoestring you could set up a system like mine. It's described in the same link I mentioned earlier and can be seen in this picture:

It all depends upon the size of your budget.

heinz-oz · Post by **heinz-oz** » Mon Jun 26, 2006 1:27 am

My two pennies worth, It doesn't matter how much physical RAM you have, eventually some of it needs to be swapped in/out. If you execute a program, commands need to be read from your program folder, source data needs to be read and rendered data needs to be written. If all of this takes place on one physical disk, irrespective of whether or not you notice it, your disk needs to jump to certain disk locations to read and other locations to write. A hard disk is a mechanical device. Any of these actions not only require time, even though in the millisecond or nanosecond range, the disk needs to speed up and slow down and the scanner arm needs to jump to different locations (ranges) on your HDD. It doesn't matter how many partitions you have on the drive, you only have one controller and one read/write device. All this thrashing about also generates heat and wear and tear on the drive.

If you care to look at my setup, I have a physical drive for my programs, a separate physical drive for the swap file, a separate physical drive for the source files and another for the rendered files. That means that during an editing/rendering session, either of my disk drives is either reading or writing, no jumping from the start of the disk for reading a command, jumping to the middle somewhere to get the data to be processed and to the end of it for writing the result to the disk.

Since I set up this system I have noticed a slight improvement in overall speed but my system does not double up as a space heater any more. Even after a lengthy editing session, my drives are running relatively cool. In the past, when I was doing everything on one physical disk, I could feel the increase in air temperature coming from my system fan. Also, in over 4 years of using this system, I did not have a HDD fail on me and some of my disks were already in use before I set up this system.

GuyL · Post by **GuyL** » Mon Jun 26, 2006 2:19 am

Heinz, I've often thought about have a drive just for the swap file. I may just do it one day. I wonder how much of a difference it actually makes in system performance?

sjj1805 · Post by **sjj1805** » Mon Jun 26, 2006 2:23 am

Guy,
It's back to that link of mine again!
to save you hunting through the article (it's a bit long!)

All you wanted to know about swap files but were afraid to ask

Sounds like Heinz has a very similar setup/workflow to mine.

GuyL · Post by **GuyL** » Mon Jun 26, 2006 2:52 am

Thanks, Steve. That is a good read.

heinz-oz · Post by **heinz-oz** » Mon Jun 26, 2006 2:59 am

GuyL wrote:Heinz, I've often thought about have a drive just for the swap file. I may just do it one day. I wonder how much of a difference it actually makes in system performance?

The swap file on a separate drive is not going to give you a measurable speed advantage by itself. Having a number of drives will, because you don't have the disk controller allocating time for read/write operations sequentially. It all happens almost simultaneously because each disk has its own controller.

Having the swap file in its own partition, on a separate physical drive, has the advantage that you can set it up just big enough for the required size. This will prevent the swap file from getting fragmented as well. Of course, setting the min/max size of the swap file to the same value will also achieve that but you have no control over where exactly this file resides on your HDD. The swap file is one of the largest contributors to disk fragmentation.

sjj1805 · Post by **sjj1805** » Mon Jun 26, 2006 3:06 am

heinz-oz wrote:..............Having the swap file in its own partition, on a separate physical drive, has the advantage that you can set it up just big enough for the required size. This will prevent the swap file from getting fragmented as well. Of course, setting the min/max size of the swap file to the same value will also achieve that but you have no control over where exactly this file resides on your HDD. The swap file is one of the largest contributors to disk fragmentation.

There is a way of doing this... its in the link above.

maddrummer3301 · Post by **maddrummer3301** » Mon Jun 26, 2006 5:06 am

GuyL · Post by **GuyL** » Mon Jun 26, 2006 10:16 am

maddrummer3301 wrote: So if Guys system performs good for him then probably putting the swap file on another drive may not bear noticeable improvement because he's not tasking the swap / paging file much if not at all.

My system has its primary drive (200 MB IDE) with Windows and the swap file. I have a dedicate SATA 2 250 MB drive for video editing. I do not have any performance issues for anything at this time. I do multi-task a lot but not when video editing.

roy wood · Post by **roy wood** » Mon Jun 26, 2006 10:49 am

Hi all Grateful Thanks for all of your information far more than I had hoped for and that site link Steve provided so many answers to areas that up till now I had been very hazy on. Regards Roy.

maddrummer3301 · Post by **maddrummer3301** » Mon Jun 26, 2006 2:11 pm