Computer per AVCHD video editing

[Roberto]

Hello,

I am about to change my 4-years old PC (which is no way at all be able to run a AVCHD file) with something new.
I know that the argument was already touched, but after reading several posts, I did not get a comprehensive answer yet.
Basically, my questions (which maybe common to other people as well) are:

1. Graphic card characteristics. In the sea of different graphic cards, what are the must-have feature for video editing/processing (considering that I am not doing 3D modeling or video gaming) ?
What about the graphic card memory ? 1GB, 512MB ? Any big difference ?

2. How much RAM is suggested ? Of course, the bigger quantity, the better... but also the less money, the better
Is there any experience of relevant improvement between, for example, 4GB and 8GB ?

3. AMD or Intel CPU ? I wonder what are the feedback of people using AMD vs. Intel, because the difference in price can be relevant.
Basically, to play/render with no issues AVCHD files, what should it be the minimum CPU configuration ? The top tier loks to be Intel i7-965 but it is also very expensive.... what about other processors within this family ?
And what about AMD ones ?

4. Last but not least, Windows 7 vs. Windows Vista vs. Windows XP
I read about several issues with Windows 7, somehow solved (100% ?) by the Corel SP2, but I also read that, despite several inner improvement by Mcrosoft (e.g. Directmedia), the final rendering speed seems similar to what can be achieved with Windows XP.
Also, VX X2 was not probably developed to avail from a dual-core platform.
Hence, my quetsion is: does it really makes sense to go on Windows 7, considering that I have the Windows XP ? Which advantages can I hope to get ?

Thank in advance for any feedbacks/comments

Roberto

[mitchell65]

Do you intend to build your own PC or buy ready made?

[erdna]

For AVCHD editing you mainly need numbercrunching power. Not so much for the editing itself (the proxi concept does a wonderfull job if you can live with reduced quality video whiile editing) but for rendering projects with lots of crossovers,titles...And even more power for creating e.g.an SD DVD out of your AVCHD footage. Of course it all depends ...if you are not in a hurry you don't need the fasted i7 processor with supperfast FSB and RAM. A good videocard (not the toplevel of what gamers want!) garantees that you can smoothly playback AVCHD video with a SW player. I don't think ProX2 is optimized for multiprocessors. More than 4GB (3,..) is only potentially OK with 64bit systems. Your videocard should best have a DVI/HDMI output and be connected with a fullhd display, so that you can verify resolution and artifacts in optimal condition.
Several years ago, in order to help clarifying the PC configuration issue, one of te moderators (in the Media Studio forum) created a reference project file (would be .VSP in Video studio) containing colors, crossovers, text, audio, en all the members could download and render the project, and report the rendertime together with some info about their PC configurations and important settings. Today we would at least need a native HDV and a native AVCHD project file.

[Roberto]

Thank you for the answer.

What about Windows 7... at the end, is it really convenient to have it or not ?
In other words:

1. Windows 7 + more than 4GB RAM => high cost
2. Windows XP with 4GB RAM => cheaper

If the configuration nr. 2 is working fine for AVCHD rendering (my projects are not extremely complicated, I seldom use more than 3 overlay tracks), and if the motherboard has enough slots for further RAM expansion, mperhaps I will go for it... then, one day I can still add more RAM and switch to Windows 7, maybe together with a new Video Studio release, optimized for 64-bit platform.

[Clevo]

Here is my opinion...

I doubt Video editing will be the only activity you will perform in the future..

Microsoft will eventually stop supporting XP...as will software developers

Buy now to meet your needs with an eye for expanding and improving in one year and two years.


With these in mind and a few others you can think of.... I would go for
i5

4 gigs of ram (min)

lots of Hard Drive space eg 2 x 1Tb min

Nvidia Graphics card with lots of RAM and an in built TV receiver at the best bang for buck price point (varies in every country)

Windows 7 64 bit

Fast and future proofed as much as possible

[2Dogs]

If you are on a budget, an AMD system might suit you best, especially if you build it yourself.

If you already have a pc, you may very well be able to simply change the motherboard and processor to transform it into a much faster machine, though you will have to re-install Windows. The AMD cpu/mobo combo might cost as little as $150 in the US, and result in a system that is about 70% as fast as a new Intel i5 750 system.

One benefit is that you will always see a great performance boost from a clean install of Windows, without all the "crapware" that pc makers lard them up with. There's no better way of getting your pc to run "lean and mean".

Even the fairly recent AMD integrated graphics, such as 770G, 785G or 790G give hardware acceleration for h264 (AVCHD) playback. Unless you need to do any video gaming, there is no need whatsoever for a discrete graphics card. In fact I'd go so far as to say that it would be a waste of money. Even HD video editing has no need of a fancy 3D graphics card, and these days even fairly low-end current cpu's have enough power for smooth HD playback - though as I said, even the AMD integrated graphics can offload cpu usage and accelerate HD playback.

Although Intel processors rule the roost as far as encoding speed is concerned, you can't beat the AMD Athlon II X4 processors for value for money when encoding. Add to that the fact that the AMD motherboards are significantly cheaper than Intel ones.

One big advantage of an AMD system is that AMD offer backwards compatibility with their cpu's - so you can use even their latest ones with motherboards either using the long established DDR2 RAM, or ones that will work with DDR3 RAM. Which one you choose might depend on what existing RAM you have. If you build your own system, you can make sure to use a motherboard with four RAM slots, making it easy to use your existing RAM but still add more. Many low-end "Tier One" pc's from the likes of HP, Dell etc will feature a measly two RAM slots.

In the near future, AMD will release some 6 core cpu's, that will work with their existing AM3 motherboards, and quite possibly the AM2+ ones too - so all-in-all, AMD syustems are much more amenable to upgrading.

Contrast that with Intel, who have released several different cpu sockets, limiting realistic upgrade possibilities.

Since 32 bit Windows can't handle much more than about 3GB of RAM, you need to go to a 64 bit OS if you wish to use more.

When encoding video, however, there is a negligible improvement in encoding speed with more RAM, although other aspects of the pc will benefit. This might seem counter-intuitive, but believe me, it's true.

[Roberto]

Thanks guys for the feedbacks.

Yesterday I walked a bit around the jungle of computer HW/SW sellers in Shanghai (you can't imagine what's that till you don't "touch" it by yourself) and get a list of possible pieces of HW, because I am going to buy them separately and assemble everything by myself.

Regarding Intel CPU, I wonder what's the big difference (if any) between i7 cores and i5.... any feedback is welcomed.
It is quite interesting the feedback about AMD, I will figure out more details about that.

Regarding the RAM, now I started to think that the 4GB limitation of Win XP could be quite severe... probably I will gop for Win 7, even though I am still thinking about Win 7 Pro vs. Home Premium, as the latter does not offer the Win XP mode, which can still be useful for some old applications not supported on Win 7.

Regarding the graphic card, the feedback is quite interesting: I want to check something more, because, on my old PC, when I added a new graphic card (still AGP bus), I really did not see any benefit compared to the one integrated in the MB. But, theoretically, at least the graphic card integrated memory shoudl give some benefit in terms of speed... I think this could be an interesting topic to be further analyzed.

[2Dogs]

Hi Roberto,

wow, Shanghai must be a great place to get computer stuff!

There is of course a 64 bit version of Windows XP if you need to use more than 3GB of RAM, though all reports are that Win7 64 bit is a great OS.

The big difference with the Intel i7 cpu's is that they have Hyperthreading, which gives them up to a 30% performance boost compared with the i5 750, on which Intel deliberately decided not to implement Hyperthreading. (although confusingly they just introduced some new i5 500 series dual core cpu's with Hyperthreading)

Motherboards for the i7 900 series are a lot more expensive - they have triple channel DDR3 memory, and two 16x pcie slots - so they're really aimed at high-end gamers, who wish to use two high-powered graphics cards. For a video editing machine, that would be serious overkill.

If money is not so tight, you could consider something like an i7 860 - it can use a more reasonably priced LGA 1156 motherboard, which has dual channel DDR3 RAM, and just one 16x pcie slot. The i7 860 has Hyperthreading, so it would be about as fast as you can get for video encoding.

If you build your own system, you will also have the option of overclocking the cpu, giving you maybe an additional 30% faster encoding performance.

[Roberto]

Hi,

actually Shanghai is amzing for the quantity of electronic stuffs, but in terms of proces ...even after a bloody and lengthy haggling, the final price is barely the same you can see on Internet or maybe even a bit more expensive.
Anyway, back to the topic, yesterday I made some research on AMD solutions, which also look interesting.
The Phenom II X3 or X4 sound cool, and the motherboards also look quite interesting.
Next weekend I think it's going to be The Day to put everything together, then I will update my profile with my HW/SW platform

[2Dogs]

There is of course one other significant option, depending on what format video you are working with - a Winfast PxVC1100 Video Transcoding Card. This uses a Cell processor as a dedicated video encoder, and can result in encoding speeds about three times faster than can be achieved with the fastest cpu. In fact if you use one of these cards, the encoding speed is largely independent of the cpu once you get beyond a certain cpu speed. Here's an article on the device

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/lea ... ,2523.html

Eventually, video encoding will be carried out by the GPU, and we can look forward to an order of magnitude improvement in encoding speed. At the present time, some video editing programs support GPU use for video filters, but not yet for the main encoding.

If I was on a budget, and especially if I already had an existing pc using DDR2 RAM, I'd build an AMD system, probably using an Athlon II X4 630 or 635.

If I had another few hundred bucks to spend and was building from scratch, I would go for an Intel i7 860 based system.