Help me build a system just for ulead

[Screwball]

I only have interest now in Ulead. I keep having problems (that I will not bother to list, but primarily burning) and the general concencus of opinion is that I am pushing my system to the limit. I do not have loads of money (far from it) but I need to selfbuild a computer than ulead will be happy to run with. Is there anyone out there who can list (not minimum, nor maximum) requirements for ulead (version 9) to sail along?
I would appreciate response greatly.
Kind regards

[roy wood]

Hi, first of all you need to complete your system profile so that we have a complete picture of what you have at the moment. It maybe that you only need to upgrade a specific part of your existing system.
Also if you do need to builld a new system hard drives & optical drives etc can be transferred saving you money to spend on a higher spec Motherboard/ CPU combination.
Download & run this free prog it will reveal everything about your current system.

http://www.belarc.com/free_download.html

From experience of building my own PC I can tell you that if you don't take the time to research exactly what you need now as well as allowing for expansion of the system in the future you will regret it and waste a lot of money.

[Screwball]

Dear Roy,
So appreciate your reply, god knows how to extract all that info without your suggested programme!
The result is as follows:-
Operating System System Model Windows XP Professional Service Pack 2 (build 2600) MATSONIC MS8188E 1.0
Enclosure Type: Desktop Processor a Main Circuit Board b 1.67 gigahertz AMD Athlon XP
128 kilobyte primary memory cache
256 kilobyte secondary memory cache Board: MATSONIC MS8188E 1.0
Bus Clock: 133 megahertz
BIOS: American Megatrends Inc. Version 07.00T 04/02/01 Drives Memory Modules c,d 190.79 Gigabytes Usable Hard Drive Capacity
141.08 Gigabytes Hard Drive Free Space

TSSTcorp CD/DVDW TS-H552U [CD-ROM drive]
3.5" format removeable media [Floppy drive]

Brother DCP-110C USB Device [Hard drive] -- drive 2
Maxtor 2F030J0 [Hard drive] (30.75 GB) -- drive 0, s/n F12DFL9E, rev VAM51JJ0, SMART Status: Healthy
ST3160022ACE [Hard drive] (160.04 GB) -- drive 1 608 Megabytes Installed Memory

Slot '0' has 128 MB
Slot '1' has 512 MB Local Drive Volumes

c: (NTFS on drive 0) 30.75 GB 15.81 GB free
d: (NTFS on drive 1) 160.04 GB 125.27 GB free
Network Drives
It must be said that I intend to remove the D: large hard drive initially, set it up as a stand alone drive with absolute bare bones requirements to dedicate it to U V S 9. Use the small drive for daily tasks with internet etc. When working on Ulead simply remove the drive from its tray and insert the Ulead drive and reboot.
Thankyou in anticipation for your interest and advice.
Regards
Kevin

[roy wood]

Hi Screwball, at first glance your present system could probably be up-graded to make it an adequate machine for the Job.

(a) Your low on memory 1GB will suffice. Replace the 128Mb stick with another 512Gb to match the first. Use this link 'Crucial' will analyse existing memory and provide details of compatible upgrade. (you don't need to buy from them just get the Specs). http://www.crucial.com/ Click on the 'Scan my System' button.

(b) There's no mention of a seperate 'Graphics card' this is very important
as onboard graphics use a lot of memory just to run your monitor. A PCI or AGP card with it's OWN memory chip 32Mb+. This will fit into your PCI, AGP slots depending on what you have on your Motherboard.

(c) If you wan't to burn DVDs then you will need a DVD re-writer these are quite cheap these days. A lot of people still keep there old CD rom players for input, playing music etc.

(d) There are also a couple of system tweaks that will improve performance. Which I'll cover later.

Now you have to decide whether you wan't to take the upgrade or new build route.

[LGO]

Kevin . . .

Roy is steering you well so I will only add one item that I learned from these forums and has helped tremendously.

Have TWO hard drives on the computer you use for Video Studio. The program software can reside on the C: drive with all your other software, but capture to the other hard drive. I have a separate drive dedicated to capturing/editing and I never have problems any more.

Good luck,

LGO

[sjj1805]

Adding to the multi drive suggestion please view my post:
Creating a Multi Drive system

It's a bit different from the 'normal' way of doing it.

[screwball2]

Thanks a million for all your help. Due to limited funds at the moment I will try the upgrade route first. I do of course have a good DVD rewriter, somehow it wasn't mentioned in the scan. I also intend to have a completely seperate drive for UVS. Thankyou all again, will inform of results soon.
Regards
Kevin

[roy wood]

Quote>I also intend to have a completely seperate drive for UVS.

This is something you need to be aware of:-

The general rule is that an IDE bus will run at the speed of the slowest device on the controller. Thus, if you put a high-speed hard drive on the same IDE controller as a CD-ROM or Zip drive (which are "slow" devices), the hard drive will run very slowly. It does not matter which device is Master and which one is Slave. With this in mind, note the following examples:

1. If you have one medium-speed OS hard drive (5400rpm), one high-speed video hard drive (7200rpm) and one CD-ROM drive, you should put the CD-ROM as Slave on the primary IDE controller and the video drive alone on the secondary IDE controller.

2. If you have one high-speed OS hard drive, one high-speed video hard drive and two CD-ROM drives (or one CD-ROM and some other removable media device like a CD-R or Zip Drive), you should put the CD-ROM drives together on the secondary IDE controller, and Slave the video drive to the OS drive on the primary IDE controller.

3. If you have one medium-speed OS hard drive, one high-speed video hard drive and two CD-ROM drives (or one CD-ROM and some other removable media device like a CD-R or Zip Drive), you should use the same configuration as in Example 2, because even though the video drive cannot run at full performance because it is slaved to a slow OS hard drive, it will still do better than it would if it were on the same IDE controller as a removable media drive like a CD-ROM.

[screwball2]

Took a while, but now I understand! I can only repeat that I intend to install a 'Caddy' and a completely seperate hard drive so that as far as realistic, the computer is completely and totally dedicated to UVS9. I would really love to know, to what extent, and in total, one can remove programmes, files, extras etc. from XP without restricting the efficiency of UVS?
XP is so 'In depth and cover-all, I am sure possibly 75% could be erased - but where would one start?

I really do appreciate Roy your time, effort and interest in other peoples problems, the time and dedication required to solve them without any request for remuneration for people you have never met? Wouldn't it be a wonderful world if others in other walks of life would follow suit? Without choosing to blow you up or behead you if you choose to use Nero or windows Movie maker!
My kindest regards
Kevin

[sjj1805]

Took a while, but now I understand! I can only repeat that I intend to install a 'Caddy' and a completely seperate hard drive so that as far as realistic, the computer is completely and totally dedicated to UVS9. I would really love to know, to what extent, and in total, one can remove programmes, files, extras etc. from XP without restricting the efficiency of UVS?
XP is so 'In depth and cover-all, I am sure possibly 75% could be erased - but where would one start?

I really do appreciate Roy your time, effort and interest in other peoples problems, the time and dedication required to solve them without any request for remuneration for people you have never met? Wouldn't it be a wonderful world if others in other walks of life would follow suit? Without choosing to blow you up or behead you if you choose to use Nero or windows Movie maker!
My kindest regards
Kevin

The answer lies here!
Create a Video Editing Profile

[kaybee]

With XP would it be simpler to set up another 'user' with only the programs needed for Video editing?

[2Dogs]

Hi Kevin,

I thought I'd add comments to some of Roy's points. I thought he laid things out in a pretty logical way, but I differ slightly in some of my opinions. (apologies if my post has ended up meandering a bit!)

Your low on memory 1GB will suffice.

Tests I did with my own P4 2.8c system showed that Video Studio ran perfectly well with 256MB of RAM. There was no increase in rendering speed with increasing RAM - the only benefit was with Smart Rendering, which may or may not be significant. RAM is also a bit pricey at the moment. However, it would probably make sense to replace the 128MB stick with another 512MB at some point. 1024MB seems to be the "sweet spot" with XP, so it might help with other stuff.

(b) There's no mention of a seperate 'Graphics card' this is very important
as onboard graphics use a lot of memory just to run your monitor. A PCI or AGP card with it's OWN memory chip 32Mb+. This will fit into your PCI, AGP slots depending on what you have on your Motherboard.

For video editing, even the most primitive integrated graphics will be entirely adequate - so with 1024MB of RAM, I don't think that shared memory will create problems. Whilst there might be some other benefits from a separate graphics card, funds might be better spent on a cpu/combo first.

I like removable drive caddies - but they only work if you have a big enough tower case. With my mid tower, I've had to resort to using USB enclosures for extra drives, with all the cable clutter that involves! I also have two IDE burners and two IDE hard drives on my pc, so all the IDE conections are already used up. If I had a full tower case, I'd need to get an additional IDE controller card or change my main hard drives to SATA. I'm loathe to do that, however, since my drive imaging program will not work with SATA drives. Perhaps the ideal would be to use SATA caddies for data only with the boot drive kept as IDE. If you're going to be buying a new burner, though, there are now some SATA models out at reasonable prices - but still more than comparable IDE burners. Not all burners are equal! One of my favourites is the Pioneer DVR111D.

If you do set up a removable drive as an alternative boot configuration just for video editing, then do make a separate partition on that drive just for windows and programs, and have all your data in a separate partition.

It seems like you could upgrade the pc by installing the fastest cpu that will fit the motherboard, which would definitely be the simplest option, or maybe get a new motherboard and cpu combination, which I think would give you better results. There are some pretty cheap deals on such AMD combos. You'll then be torn between making it up to date enough to use current hardware, or trying to salvage stuff, like RAM from your old system.

In the end, it'll depend on how much you can shell out. In the US, Newegg have a combo deal for a socket 754 Athlon XP 64 3000 with a motherboard for about $90. so long as your case and power supply are OK, you could revamp your pc pretty drastically with a new cpu/motherboard combo. Of course you'll then have to go thru the hassle of re-installing XP on it.... but if you have that on disc rather than pre-loaded on your original pc, it's fairly straightforward.

Good luck!

[screwball2]

I have printed out all your valuable advice and are passing it on to a local computer expert (who does not have all your expertise in the requirements of UVS) he will then interpret the pros and cons and suggest the best course of action. I have to agree, and in my humble opinion, that at the end of the day the most important aspect across the board is a powerful processor - but this requires a major upgrade and where do you stop? As one has upgraded to a better board why not replace the box - the DVD writer - sound card - etc etc. I have been unemployed for some months until just recently, and have a lot of financial 'catching up' to do. All I so want is to build a super machine so that there are no limitations regarding hardware. But the wife has other priorities???? I think Ulead is just amazing and any criticism of it at all has at the end of the day been down to hardware inefectiveness. I am not an 'arty' person but in multimedia production I have found a niche that somehow I excel at and enjoy more than anything I have ever experienced. I use every available avenue of UVS with relish.
Will be in touch regularly.
Kindest regards
Kevin
(The nickname Screwball came from my days as a semi-pro Pool Player)

[sjj1805]

With XP would it be simpler to set up another 'user' with only the programs needed for Video editing?

That is a part of the Video Editing profile. It goes much deeper than that.

[Black Lab]

All I so want is to build a super machine so that there are no limitations regarding hardware.

Just remember that in 6 months your "super machine" will be surpassed by the latest and greatest!