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Editing machine Questions (9 posts)

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Simon Hosick said 3 months, 1 week ago:

Really just wanting to kick off about editing PCs. I bought a pretty decent desktop a while ago as well as Adobe CS4, recently Sony Vegas for the small things, and now I’m looking at getting a 60D.

Do you think I’ll need to upgrade my desktop to handle the higher quality?

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Scott Jarvie said 3 months, 1 week ago:

Without computer specs, ‘a while ago’ is completely relative to outside variables, to which the only answers are; perhaps or depends.

To keep things general, if you are currently able to edit HD without a problem, and the data rates of the new footage is similar, no. You may need some software to convert to a more stable editable format, or worst case scenario, you’ll only need more ram.

If you are going SD to HD and only have a 32bit cpu, time to upgrade.
Dudley Do-Right says:
“If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right!”
“Remember to always look before crossing the road.”

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John P. Hess said 3 months, 1 week ago:

CPU power has pretty much leveled off in my experience. I’m still working on my Intel i7 CPU going on for probably 3-4 years (I think, I have a hard time judging time these days).

Where you want to spend your money is in the Graphics Processor.

The more current versions of Adobe (CS4 and above I think) utilize something called “Mercury Playback Engine” which utilizes the CUDA features of the Video Card for the majority of the heavy lifting in regards to video. And if you think about it, that’s really smart considering that getting 1920×1080 video to run at 30p is cakewalk for a piece of hardware designed to run Call of Duty at higher framerates and larger dimensions.

So where you want to invest is in a CUDA enabled Video card. The nVidia 570 (I think that’s the number) was one I installed in a friend’s editing machine and it screams.

The other thing you’ll want to max out on is RAM. Like Scott said, you MUST run in a 64 bit environment. Then you’ll want a bare minimum of 8 gigs of RAM, but more is better :)

After that, you’ll need a lot of hard drive space. I’m running a 2 drive RAID to try to get a little more speed. I think it’s faster – but I can’t be entirely sure. I use a bunch of other hard drives to back up stuff.
All my Best,
John Hess
Creative Industries Media Group | GospelJohn.net

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Simon Hosick said 3 months, 1 week ago:

Would I have to upgrade my motherboard as well?

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Scott Jarvie said 3 months, 1 week ago:

Depends on the mobo and it’s limits. If it only supports 32bit processors, yes, if the max RAM is only 4gb, yes, if it doesn’t have a pcie expansion slot for video card, yes. Check the documentation for the mobo.

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Benjamin C. Dover said 3 months ago:

Google E-buyer. I got the components for my computer for just over £300, quad core, 64 bit, 8gig RAM. I found I needed more RAM but I’ve got Windows 7 and you can use USB sticks, I just got a 16 gig stick to keep in the back of the computer for that extra RAM.

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Simon Hosick said 3 months ago:

I’d tried using sticks before but nothing happened.

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John P. Hess said 3 months ago:

@bendover said:
I just got a 16 gig stick to keep in the back of the computer for that extra RAM.

I wouldn’t count on this – technically, it’s not RAM – what you’re doing is virtual page caching. The whole point of RAM is speed. RAM is very fast. It’s much faster than your internal hard drive and certainly a lot faster than a USB flash drive.

Seems to me you could just as easily use a separate hard drive to do the same thing (either internal or external via USB). I imagine what it’s doing is shuffling the low priority stuff onto the USB and freeing up the RAM for higher priority programs…

Either way, you’re not going to experience an increase speed like you would when you add real RAM. And when you’re dealing with lots of large video files, RAM gets eaten up pretty fast.

This link is rather old but I think it states the problems with USB RAM well
http://ask-leo.com/can_i_use_a_usb_ram_stick_to_increase_system_memory.html

http://ask-leo.com/comments_002327.php?page=6

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Scott Jarvie said 3 months ago:

@Gospel_John said:
I wouldn’t count on this – technically, it’s not RAM – what you’re doing is virtual page caching. The whole point of RAM is speed. RAM is very fast. It’s much faster than your internal hard drive and certainly a lot faster than a USB flash drive.

Seems to me you could just as easily use a separate hard drive to do the same thing (either internal or external via USB). I imagine what it’s doing is shuffling the low priority stuff onto the USB and freeing up the RAM for higher priority programs…

Either way, you’re not going to experience an increase speed like you would when you add real RAM. And when you’re dealing with lots of large video files, RAM gets eaten up pretty fast.

This link is rather old but I think it states the problems with USB RAM well
http://ask-leo.com/can_i_use_a_usb_ram_stick_to_increase_system_memory.html

http://ask-leo.com/comments_002327.php?page=6

QFT,

The only way you might see a speed boost by using a storage device as temporary RAM is if you have a PCIe Solid state drive… but that’s gonna net you a few thousand just for that (and take up a pcie slot).

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