Someone on this board recently advised me to stay away from shared graphics ram when buying a new PC for VideoStudio11+ and my Canon HV20. Can someone clarify what I need to look for spec-wise?
The following may or may not be the answer to the above, and if it isn't, I'd appreciate some clarity here, too...
When browsing for computers I've noticed "video memory" in the specs, and typically it says either 128 or 256MB, or "shared". Is this where I need to avoid "shared"?
Shared Graphics Ram and Video Memory
Moderator: Ken Berry
-
Blackbeagle
You don't find too many desktop PCs with shared memory anymore. The only ones you find are usually 'entry-level' advertised for around $600. I would not recommend shared memory for a desktop. For a laptop, it's quite common even with newer ones, but for desktop, it's definitely a negative. I'd go with at least 256mb.
Laptop for video editing
Hi oblivion,
you might find that laptops with shared memory are significantly cheaper than ones with separate graphics cards. The latter are sometimes aimed at gaming usage. Bear in mind that for video editing, you only need a fairly basic graphics card, and integrated graphics are fine.
I don't think that shared memory should be a deal breaker - you can always go into BIOS and limit video memory usage to, say, 64Mb. Alternatively, you can install more RAM. In versions of VS up to 10, running on XP, I've found that the amount of RAM is far less significant than most people seem to think. It does speed up smart rendering, but has virtually no effect on encoding speed.
I don't have any experience of VS use with Vista, though, but I think that you'd need to be looking at a minimum of 1Gb of RAM. A sensible Vista video editing hardware profile might disable all of the RAM hungry "eye candy" effects, as well as all the other unnecessary services
One thing I would recommend is that you get a laptop with a firewire input if you're considering capturing video from a MiniDV camcorder. You can buy cardbus firewire cards very cheaply, however.
One limitation of laptops compared with desktop machines is their slower hard drives. I've not experienced any problems with dropped frames when capturing from my MiniDV camcorder onto a laptop with a 4200rpm IDE drive, however. To extend hard drive capacity, you can easily use an external USB hard drive - and if you do any amount of video editing, you'll soon use up even the largest laptop hard drive.
you might find that laptops with shared memory are significantly cheaper than ones with separate graphics cards. The latter are sometimes aimed at gaming usage. Bear in mind that for video editing, you only need a fairly basic graphics card, and integrated graphics are fine.
I don't think that shared memory should be a deal breaker - you can always go into BIOS and limit video memory usage to, say, 64Mb. Alternatively, you can install more RAM. In versions of VS up to 10, running on XP, I've found that the amount of RAM is far less significant than most people seem to think. It does speed up smart rendering, but has virtually no effect on encoding speed.
I don't have any experience of VS use with Vista, though, but I think that you'd need to be looking at a minimum of 1Gb of RAM. A sensible Vista video editing hardware profile might disable all of the RAM hungry "eye candy" effects, as well as all the other unnecessary services
One thing I would recommend is that you get a laptop with a firewire input if you're considering capturing video from a MiniDV camcorder. You can buy cardbus firewire cards very cheaply, however.
One limitation of laptops compared with desktop machines is their slower hard drives. I've not experienced any problems with dropped frames when capturing from my MiniDV camcorder onto a laptop with a 4200rpm IDE drive, however. To extend hard drive capacity, you can easily use an external USB hard drive - and if you do any amount of video editing, you'll soon use up even the largest laptop hard drive.
JVC GR-DV3000u Panasonic FZ8 VS 7SE Basic - X2