Help building a video editing system!

[bythegods]

hi all,
first i'm not sure if this is the right forum or not, but i think its the most appropriate forum for this.

i'm building a system for a friend of mine. it wont be overclocked and 90% will be used for video editing/capturing. and sometimes also for presentation (using a beamer).

i asked around in a few comp store (the ones i usually buy my stuffs) and they said they dont know much about it, but the system will need lots of ram and stability and the 3dcard isnt really matter cause video editing use 2d (the system will use a video capture card, perhaps a canopus, not sure)

so this is what i currently have in mind:
-asus p4c800-E deluxe
- p4 3.0c
- 1 gig of twinmos (with the twinmos chip) pc3200
- radeon 9200 se (i know its ****ty, but it wont be used much)
- antec amg 1000 (inc. 430 truepower)
- 2x nec 2500 dvd writer (must have)
- 2x maxtor 160gig s-ata with 8 mb cache


the total cost is around 1200 euro for this and he really want it to stay around this cost.

now for my questions:
1. i'm not very familiar with p4 cause i use amd myself. is the ram timing make a big difference in p4 system (especially for video editing)? cause i heard from lots of people that ram timing makes little to no difference in p4 system.

2. will the video card up to his task? i know video editing use 2d instead of 3d, just wanna make sure. its either that 9200se(128 mb) or a geforce4 ti4200 (64mb version). and will it makes any difference if i use the 64mb version instead of 128??

3. about the nec 2500. its kinda new so i'm wondering if they're reliable or not. cause my friend currently using nec 1300 version and happy about it, but want a faster one (8x speed). any other suggestion for the dvd writer with 8x speed (+- writer) around the same price as the nec one?


thats all for now. thx for reading it and any comments/suggestions are most welcome.
cheers,

[Mr.Guvernment]

if ti is going to be used for video capturing - you are going to want a MUCH better video card

unless they are using firewire? What are they capturing from? even a low end 9600 AIW or heck an 8500 DV AIW would be better then that 9200.

Also - personal opninion - dont go maxtor - go WD or samsung.


Why does he need 2 dvd burner drives? and personalyl - i would say go with the new Plextor 8x DVD burners

As for the ram just be sure to get 2 x512 sticks optimised for dual channel - it does make some difference, - the timing i dont think matter a smuch as amd but to go from 2.5 to 2 is a nice perfroance jump.

[bythegods]

hey, thx for the comments.
about the vid card, i choose that cause it wont be used much and its cheap (45 euro). for capturing it will use a video capturing card, perhaps a canopus raptor (http://www.canopus.us/US/products/DVRaptor-RT2_Max/pt_DVRaptorRT2_Max.asp) or something similar.

the system will be used for capturing a home made movie (semi proffesional) and editing them using progs like premier, after effect etc. so i want to know will i need a better vid card for it along with the capture card.

for the harddisk, i told my friend the same thing actually, but he insist cause he has been using maxtor hds for a long time and its reliable (according to him)

plextor 8x dvd burner would be nice, but its too pricey and it costs twice as much as the nec one. and i really dont know why the hell he needs two of them :p

about the ram, i guess it doesnt matter that much for p4 then :D good to know that. i'll try to find some cas 2 cheap memory if i can then.

thx again

[Blueacid]

The more ram, the better - working with large amounts of uncompressed video won't half eat up RAM, so if you can afford it, go for 1.5 or even 2 gigs of ram.

As for hard drives, you might want to consider some form of RAID implementation... Perhaps Raid 0 (which needs two drives, but SHOULD one drive fail you lose all your data) or Raid 0+1 (Which uses four drives - which would be costly, but would be very fast, and fault tolerant, so it could deal with a maximum of two drive failures, and keep on chugging)

Here's a useful link letting you know all about the different RAID levels http://www.acnc.com/04_01_00.html


Other than that, looks good to me :D

[tom10167]

I'd put two 1gig sticks in there, also, Raid 1 it, the performance of Raid 0 isn't worth it in your case, and 0+1 is just impractical.

[bythegods]

thx for the suggestions guys. i'll go check more about the raid configuration cause as of now i dont know anything about it and have no experience. and for the ram, i guess my friend have to settle with 1 gig for now cause of the budget. and he can add it up later if he needs/wants it later on since the board has 4 ram slots.

off to bed now, will be checking this thread again tomorrow,

[YellowDart]

It's prolly a bit more expensive, but I'd personally get 2 WD Raptor 74gb 10k rpm drives in a RAID 0 for my working/scratch disk, and maybe one of the 160 gb SATA drives for a backup/data drive. He'll notice much better performance using the 10k rpm drives to work from. Otherwise, an external firewire drive could be advisable, esp if he takes his work around w/ him...

*edit*

You could also go w/ LiteOn drives. They're made from the same factory as Plextor, but are MUCH cheaper. newegg.com has LiteOn 8x DVD burners for ~$140 US.

[diehrd]

I would build a dual processor system...

[Agent_Mull]

Your still going to need a better vid card for video editing.

[Th0r]

Originally posted by diehrd
I would build a dual processor system...

I agree, with 2 GB's of RAM... 2x74GB raptors RAID0 with 1 internal 250GB WD SE(for storage.. or you could go for 2 of these drives) ... Any ATi 8500 DV AIW cards or higher....

I would go for a DVD Burner which supports 8x-+ Media Writing...

[Dc5e]

Originally posted by Agent_Mull
Your still going to need a better vid card for video editing.
are you sure? i think just about any decent vid card would do.... it he was using 3d modeling software, then a better graphics card would help.

[YellowDart]

Originally posted by Dc5e

are you sure? i think just about any decent vid card would do.... it he was using 3d modeling software, then a better graphics card would help.

A decent midrange card, like a 9600 AIW would prolly be the best bet. It would offer a lot of longevity, and give a lot of funcionality too. W/ the VIVO your buddy could stream video strait to a TV set and see how it will actually export, as opposed to a smaller, more restricting viewport from Premiere or Final Cut Pro.