pc specs for video

peacefrog · Post by **peacefrog** » Wed Nov 23, 2005 3:00 am

Hi all
currently, my multimedia pc is
pent3, 1.8Ghz
512Mb rdram, 160Gb 7200 HDD as main transfer of video.

with relation to
cpu
ram
hdd (and/or raid thing)
and thus a new mobo...

what are decent specs to get together a good video system
cpu 3.0 Ghz is probably my target
but what areas do i need to adress with memory (ddr ram how is this
more beneficial?)
and i will target SATA.
Apart from this i look at individual list and saw a
good spec for Heinz-oz (but obviously i cannot through all here)
AIM- budget wise under $1500 Australian

cheers
froggy

sjj1805 · Post by **sjj1805** » Wed Nov 23, 2005 3:13 am

RAM is reasonably cheap nowadays I would get as much your pocket and also your motherboard will allow.

My son has a similar computer to mine, in fact his processor is slightly faster. However he only has 512MB RAM where I have 1 GB. The difference is tremendous, mine flies along a lot faster than his.

To double check your RAM requirements, start rendering a video then press these three keys together CTRL-ALT-DEL and view the memory usage tab of the task manager. This will soon let you know if you have too little.

Video work is perhaps THE most intensive work that a computers processor and RAM has to undertake.

Another item worth investing in, again they are fairly cheap nowadays, is a second hard drive. Make sure you use a different motherboard cable to the one your exisiting hard drive is connected to. Your exisiting one is in the "Primary" IDE slot, your new drive should be attached to Secondary IDE slot.

Now keep all of your AVI files and resultant MPEG Files VOB Files etc on your new second hard drive, keeping the Video Studio program on your exisiting hard drive.

peacefrog · Post by **peacefrog** » Wed Nov 23, 2005 7:56 am

thanks for your reply,
if i may ask....why an Athlon? I've seen many reports that video processing is better with pentium?
I must say, being a lowly techno person, i never fully understood why. Are you (or any others) able to clarify this practice?

Also, are all your HDD SATA or IDE?

cheers
froggy

sjj1805 · Post by **sjj1805** » Wed Nov 23, 2005 1:42 pm

AMD -v- Pentium is a big debate.
All I can say is that I have never had any problems with my AMD Athlon and its very fast. (Albeit a couple of years old by todays standards - but if it aint broke don't fix it.)

My drives are all 7200 rpm IDE including my external one.
I have a draw full of hard drives all IDE and last visit I made to a computer fair I saw this small box that allows me to place one into it and then connect it as an external USB Drive.

It works extremely well but I only use that as a sort of portable drive. It contains all my set up disks and downloaded stuff in case I need to carry it with me to repair someone's broken machine. Plus its extra storage space where I also keep back ups of important stuff like Bank Account Data etc.

It frees up room on my internal drives (For my video work). It probably would be OK for video work but I prefer the comfort factor of the internal drives.

2Dogs · Post by **2Dogs** » Thu Nov 24, 2005 12:54 am

Hi Peacefrog,

I'll throw some of my thoughts into the mix for what it's worth. I apologise in advance for the rambling nature of the post!!

I originally bought a P4 2.8c machine in preference to an Athlon XP3000 after reading as many reviews as possible regarding the capabilities of the cpu's.

At that time, the Pentium was reckoned to be slightly better at video encoding.

Since then, however, Athlon 64's have come along, and the Pentium C has been replaced by the Pentium D. The latest Pentiums are notorious for running hot, in contrast to the cool running AMD's. The Pentium has such a long pipeline that it's hamstrung for games, and other programs that have lots of conditional transfers. For straightforward video encoding, it still does OK.

Everything I read these days points to AMD being way ahead in price/performance ratio.

Pentium cpu prices have recently dropped markedly.

Intel will be terminating the Pentium line fairly soon.

There never seems to be a right time to get a pc, but if I were in the market for one now, I would certainly get an AMD machine. I'd likely put together my own system, however, since O.E.M. motherboards rarely offer the opportunity to overclock.

Make sure you get one without onboard graphics. On board sound is fine, unless you're into high-end surround stuff - unlikely!

Removeable drive bays are a great idea. Cheap, too, but it's easiest if you have a larger case with room for the bays and lots of drives.

Also look for Firewire 800 on a new motherboard.

Although loads of RAM is helpful for many applications, I do fine with 512Mb on my pc, though I suspect that "smart rendering" performance would be improved with both more RAM and faster hard drives (mine are only 7200 IDE with 2Mb cache)

I believe transcoding and rendering is largely unaffected by RAM beyond the minimum 512Mb XP "sweetspot" - it's CPU limited.

You only need a moderate video card, although if you wish to make maximum use of DV timecode, you need a "VMR compatible" display card, which means a mid-range item - check before you buy if it's important to you.

I've yet to be drawn into the great dual layer swindle.

Funny, isn't it. Even the earliest DVD drives were capable of reading single layer, double-sided and dual layer discs. Most single layer drives could write to dual layer media if there was an appropriate firmware upgrade - but manufacturers find it more convenient/profitable to sell dual layer drives instead. Whereas I have bought single layer DVD+R discs for as little as $0:17 apiece, the cheapest I've seen DL discs so far has been around $2:00.

If you've been alarmed by the recent Sony BMG rootkit scandal, you can maybe foresee what lies in store for us with the advent of Blu Ray and HD DVD discs!

peacefrog · Post by **peacefrog** » Thu Nov 24, 2005 7:24 am

thanx guys for the feedback..
I'll have to do some reading and understanding...

meanwhile....i'll get busy and see what others specs are, using the system button underneath

froggy

sharanmini · Post by **sharanmini** » Fri Nov 25, 2005 7:55 pm

Question regarding video card.

I have Dell Inspiron 2400 (P4, 640MB RAM, 40GB HDD), which has built in Video/graphic, Audio cards. I have Sony TRV-27 camcarder and I capture my home video in AVI 1 format to HDD and edit the AVI. While saving, save it to MPEG II. Then burn it to DVD-R. I am happy witht result.

If I go for an add on Video/graphic card, will get better quality video?
and how about audio card?

Please advice.

2Dogs · Post by **2Dogs** » Fri Nov 25, 2005 9:32 pm

sharanmini wrote:Question regarding video card.

I have Dell Inspiron 2400 (P4, 640MB RAM, 40GB HDD), which has built in Video/graphic, Audio cards. I have Sony TRV-27 camcarder and I capture my home video in AVI 1 format to HDD and edit the AVI. While saving, save it to MPEG II. Then burn it to DVD-R. I am happy witht result.

If I go for an add on Video/graphic card, will get better quality video?
and how about audio card?

Please advice.

Dear Sharanmini,

the short answer is probably no.

But, since your onboard graphics will probably share your RAM, you may see a slight improvement in your pc's performance with a separate card.

Onboard audio should be fine, unless you're into high-end surround stuff, for which you would need more than just the sound card anyway.

Phil S · Post by **Phil S** » Sun Nov 27, 2005 11:31 am

sjj1805 wrote:Another item worth investing in, again they are fairly cheap nowadays, is a second hard drive. Make sure you use a different motherboard cable to the one your exisiting hard drive is connected to. Your exisiting one is in the "Primary" IDE slot, your new drive should be attached to Secondary IDE slot.

Now keep all of your AVI files and resultant MPEG Files VOB Files etc on your new second hard drive, keeping the Video Studio program on your exisiting hard drive.

You have confussed me here.

I was always led to believe that you cannot put a second HD on the Secondary IDE because this is where your DVD ROM and DVD Burner resides. Even if you had the spare channels to do so the HD will be severly speed limited by the DVD drives DMA/PIO settings.

2Dogs · Post by **2Dogs** » Sun Nov 27, 2005 3:58 pm

I was always led to believe that you cannot put a second HD on the Secondary IDE because this is where your DVD ROM and DVD Burner resides. Even if you had the spare channels to do so the HD will be severly speed limited by the DVD drives DMA/PIO settings.

I have 2 hard drives currently installed, plus a CD burner and a combi DVD writer/CD writer, therefore filling all available slots on my two EIDE controllers.

DMA is enabled on all the devices, and write-back caching disabled on my capture drive. (when I'm capturing)

I've played around with swapping the drives from one controller to the other, but found it to make no apparent difference to their performance.

My next move will be to remove the CD writer and install a removeable drive bay to take an additional EIDE hard drive. I wish I had a bigger case!

sjj1805 · Post by **sjj1805** » Sun Nov 27, 2005 6:23 pm

My configuration:

3 x Removable IDE Hard Drives (ie in cadies)
1 x (IDE) DVD Writer
1 x USB Hard Drive

Primary Master "C" Drive containing my operating system and program files.
Primary Slave "D" Drive used for storage of data, pictures, music etc.
Secondary Master - Here I have split this into two partitions.
One small partition "F" with a copy of Windows XP. In case anything happens to Drive "C" I can tell the BIOS (I took out the other drives whilst installing XP on this one) to boot from this drive and retrieve my data.

(This was set up some time ago and I dont really need this extra partition in view of my current draw full of spare hard drives and the removable caddies. It was however specifically configured to retrieve Bank Account Data etc from my back up system where important data is copied to the other partition on this physical hard drive)

The remainder of the Secondary Master "Drive letter Z" is where I keep my video stuff.
and utilises the bulk of that hard Drive.
Secondary Slave - "E" Drive My DVD writer.

I then have an external Drive "G". One of my IDE Drives has been placed inside a case which then enables me to connect to the computer by way of a USB 2 connection. This is my "Removable Hard Drive" a recent addition, and also used for back ups of important data plus all my set up disks to save hunting through my bags of CD's and DVD's for them should I need to re-install anything.

This set up is as a result of evolution. IE. I began with 2 hard drives and a CD writer plus DVD Writer. I later made the hard drives removable.

later still it made more sense to replace the CD writer with another hard drive because it simply wasn't being used - the DVD Writer was doing all that sort of thing.

Whilst shopping around at a computer fair I happened to come across this reasonably cheap box that converts an ordinary IDE drive to a USB one.

I do not suffer any problems with my set up, out of synch issues etc.

The biggest problem I had was maintaining a record of where everything was located as I have a number of removable drives kept in my drawer, this was overcome by use of a program named Advanced cataloguer
http://www.evgenysoft.com/

I read something sometime ago - but cannot find it now which suggested the best set up was to have 2 hard drives on seperate IDE cables to enable the data to sort of flow in one direction it may have been from a drive copy program or a computer magazine article, sorry but cannot remember where I read it as it was quite some time ago.

Since reading whatever it was, that was the way I would set up two hard drives on one computer, but as you can see I am now up to four!!

2Dogs · Post by **2Dogs** » Sun Nov 27, 2005 9:24 pm

I read something sometime ago - but cannot find it now which suggested the best set up was to have 2 hard drives on seperate IDE cables to enable the data to sort of flow in one direction

That would make sense if you are copying a file from one drive to another - so that you are making simultaneous use of both read/write heads on the two hard drives.

Your setup sounds pretty sensible to me!

The only thing I would suggest is that you turn the duplicate XP partition into a FAT32 partition, and use it to write disk images of your C: drive to, using a program such as Norton Ghost. You can then make a backup image prior to loading any new software, knowing that you can truly remove all traces of the software if you decide to uninstall it by reloading the disk image. Or, if you suffer some catastrophic failure, perhaps a virus attack or corrupted system files, you can restore your pc to health in about 5 minutes or so. The alternative of reloading Windows, followed by all your programs is just too time-consuming! For additional security, you can write the images to or copy to DVD-RW media. In order to keep my images to the minimum size, I have my pagefile on another partition from my C: operating system and programs partition.

My apologies Phil if you feel I've hijacked your thread - but the image software advice is valid for anyone. It's basically what XP "System Restore" should be. Instead, system restore is a resource hog, and a not particularly effective means of protecting your system.