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Film Editing Computer, $1500, Tips, Tricks, Info, And Ideas

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hitbyaprkedcar7

Member
Joined
Feb 26, 2006
Location
Barnegat, NJ
Hello everyone! First id like to say that this is my first post at these forums and id like to say hi to everone :cool: Now... Onto my project.
I am currecntly a sophmore in high school and on our football team. Our school was just built and is brand new, so were getting top of the line everything including our stadium :D Anyways.. My dad somehow got himself into videoing all of our games, editing them, and selling them for a few bucks each to cover the cost of making them, and putting together a highlight film at the end of each year as a fundraiser. Now i am currently building a website for a family friend that i should get at least 1000$ for, and with this money and some other money, i am going to build a nice film editing computer/personal computer.
I have never used a dual core processor, but im going to on this computer. Im thinking of an Opteron 165 (or higher) Or the Athalon 64x2 4800+ , but am leaning more towards the Opteron 165 as iv heard it can overclock to a 2.6 2.7 ghz stable, but what can a 4800+ overclock to? If i can get the 4800+ into a 3+ ghz range, then i think ill pay double the money and get rid of SLI. I have about 1500$ on my budget.
Also, iv read up on SLI and im interested. What exactly does SLI do besides run 2 video cards? Would it help with film editing at all or only games? Im not new to computers at all, iv been around them my entire life. My parents both own a VoIP Telecommunications company called Compro Technologies, www.comprotech.com , and have thrown together many computers in the past, mostly from parts lieing around there office so none of them have been very good at all. For 300$ i bought a HP with celeron-3 2.93 ghz, 256mb ram, and i bought a GEIL 512mb cl2 card for a good deal. Blah blah blah, im rambling on. Anyways ill get to the point...

Give me your best multi tasking / film editing setup for 1500$ or less :D Maybeeeee a little bit more... Depends if im on the spending mood that day :santa:

Thanks everyone!
 
opteron 165 all the way and get 4gigs of ram. the sli isn't going to help. What film software are you going to use? Avoid SLI get a nice video card and your budget of 1500 allows for huge storage requirements for DVD video files. 40gigs an hour b4 compression will eat hd for lunch. also backup is important if you don't keep the video tapes.
 
As of right now i have Pinacle Studio 9, but im going to get the adobe one as it does HD and has plenty of really nice features ( i forget the name of it right now ) So the SLI wont help? I was thinking of doing SLI with 2 really nice video cards anyway, i think the cards were 300$ each. I forget the specs, ill look for them and post them up later. Thanks for the reply :)
 
Video cards won't help with what you want, sli is just for gaming. Definitely want a dual cpu setup and lots of memory. Are you planning on storing the movies on the hdd after they're done or just keeping the tape/dvd copies?
 
Unless you REALLY want to step up and blow almost half your budget on a card like the x1900 or 7800GTX512, I'd stick with the 7800GT. It should overclock to very near, if not the same performance as that 7800GTX. Maybe when the 7900 comes out in March, prices on the lower stuff will drop.
 
7800GT will be fine. SLI is useless for video work. What you need is dual monitors, equal size, and as big as you can get. I don't know about Pinnacle but Adobe utilizes the GPU for rendering so the single fast card isn't a bad choice there.

If you go X2 then the 3800 overclocks easily so don't go for a higher model. But the one to go for is prob the Opteron 165 or 170.

At least 2G of memory. For optimum use of the dual core the Adobe suite is the way to go. They are the leader in multithreaded ap programming. But I guess it would be cheaper to stick with what you've got.

HDD - 7200rpm drives with NCQ and a nice big buffer are more than enough for video work. What you need is SIZE. I've got, mmmm 670GB? on my video workstation.
 
A single X1800XL or 7800GT video card will be more than enough for video editing. You can go lower than that and still have plenty of headroom.

I suggest you get several large hard drives, so save some money for those.
 
Seems to me that just about all the videocards suggested here are gaming cards. That's ok if you are planning on doing serious gaming, but if not, then you will be wasting your money... Video editing uses mainly the processor, memory and hardisk.

Some video editing software uses the videocard to do realtime processing on effects and transitions, but I really don't think any of the cards suggested here will help for that.
 
Thanks for all of your info :) As for Hard Drive space, im only gonna need one internal drive, nothing to big nothing to small, maybe a 250 or 300, because the videos im going to need to put on external drives, which i have plenty of. The movies im going to be transfering from one computer to the next, im just going to do all of the rendering/editing on the computer im building. I have about 5 external drives ranging from 120 gig to 350 gig so space isnt a problem.
As for the big graphics card, if im building a 1500$ computer i might as well use some of it for a good graphics card because i might as well start playing games on it instead of buying the ps3 or xbox360, so i was thinking about getting SLI compatible hardware, and maybe in the future get another SLI card. Can you mix 2 different SLI cards or do they have to be the same model?
 
If it just for film editing and no games a 6600 is fine a 68oogs if occasional game use spend the cash else where i would ;)
 
i would suggest you get 4 gigs of RAM, an opteron 170(only b/c of 10x multi), a raid0 setup becuase you will want alot of raw reading speed when you open up big project files, and whatever gpu you want. might as well get a 7800gt and do a little gaming :) i built a system like that for a team i'm on but i havn't gotten a chance to play with it yet... i can't wait untill i get a chance to use it.
 
Sli in your case is a complete waste of money.
Only time SLI is worth it is for hardcore benchmarking or someone who likes to play at insane resolutions (above 1600x1200) with 16aa/af
And those resolutions wont change anything unless youre using a very big and very high end monitor. Now if i had a 54inch plasma HDTV ready i might want to go with SLI :p but otherwise a 7800gt is fine.
You can even get away with a 6600 if you dont ABSOLUTELY have to max all settings.
 
If it is just for video editing I would get a cheaper video card and get a better capture card for analog if you do any of that. A better capture card with a processor on the card its self will help a lot and keep frames from getting dropped. That is just my thoughts. I use an AIW 9600np it works great for video editing except the card does not render the captured video its self. Those are just my oppinions. As For SLI i believe you have to have 2 of the same cards. but since you did mention some gaming some thing like a 7800GT would be good enough.
 
Hmmm okay, so ill cut back on the video card and ill spend more into the processor. Like Spion said, the opty 170. How high could i OC the 170 to? How hard would it be to get it into the 3 ghz range
 
I recomend the Maxtor Diamondmax 10 300GB 16mb cache HDDs. I have one in my comuter and my dad has two in his and they are great drives.
 
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