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Articles for All Video Producers |
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Buying the best computer for capture and editing Processing DV - which components deliver the best return on investment when buying a computer for capture and editing (originally written for EventDV). Anatomy of a Video Editing Workstation - Just the facts; where to spend your money between processor, RAM, hard disks and graphics cards. (originally written for PC Magazine). From the Jan FAQs Basic Computer Specs Question: If you were to buy or build a computer for serious but not professional editing, what would you get?
Answer:
The short story is:
- Get a
processor that's hyper-threaded (HT Technology) or dual processors
- Get at
least 1 GB of RAM
- Get as much
disk space as you can afford. Doesn't need to be particularly fast (like
RAID), SATA (serial ATA) or even IDE is fine.
I like the
Dell and HP workstations about equally well.
Unless you've done it before, I recommend not building your own. Never seem to work as well as store bought, and savings just aren't that significant. IMHO, of course. Hyperthreading and Dual Processors Question: I was wondering if the new consumer video editing software from Pinnacle - Studio Plus Version 9 - and from Adobe - Premiere Elements 1.0 - were capable of taking advantage of dual processors. In particular, I was wondering if the rendering times of video projects were faster with the dual processors operating versus one processor. Answer: A couple of explanatory notes. First, I tested on a dual Xeon system. This allowed me to turn off one entire processor (and use only one processor in the tests). Xeons are also hyperthreaded (Intel calls this HT Technology), which means, in essence, that they can do two things at once. The Dell I tested on also lets me disable Hyperthreading so I can test on one processor running a single thread.
So I tested min:max on my dual
3.06 GHz Xeon Dell Precision 650 workstation.
Min was one processor one
thread, max was both processors both threads.
I tested by encoding a 13
minute project to MPEG-2 format. The project included slow motion effects,
blue screen effects, pan and zoom effects, picture in picture effects, color
correction effects and audio mixing. The Premiere Elements project and
Studio plus projects are similar, but not identical. Don't use these results
to compare comparative performance; rather to measure how much each benefits
from the addition processing power.
So:
One processor One
thread Dual, HT enabled
Studio 26:01 17:18
Premiere Elements 34:08 26:09
So, getting a computer with HT
technology and/or dual processors should improve processing time
significantly for both programs
Getting my editing workstation to run more stably
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