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Where I do my heavy editing...

Beanbag

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Beanbag
Joined
Jun 7, 2003
Messages
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Just got through rebuilding my video editing console this morning, and thought I'd share it with you all. Two 22" monitors, a 3.2 Ghz I5 processor with 8 gigs RAM running Win 7 Pro 64-bit. Software of choice is Premiere Pro CS5. The system all mounts in a rack built on top of a Steelcase conference table. The third screen is a Compaq laptop used for logging notes and work.

The computer case is new, necessitated by the addition of a BluRay write disk. The old case (all black) only had two optical-sized drive bays, one of which was for the DVD Write drive, while the second bay is for the swappable hard drive receptacle.

Rather than pull the DVD drive, I decided to go for a new case with four 5.25" bays. Oddly enough, the case that fit my price point and had the right number of bays was this red-and-black Cooler Master (my taste in cases is pretty much spartan and plain). It has the advantage that the entire red front is a honeycomb grille for excellent ventilation and cooling. Spent about an hour pulling the system from the old case and putting it in the new one. It's always a little unnerving to take apart a perfectly functioning system (especially one for video editing, which can be notoriously finicky as far as hardware), but everything came up when I lit it up the first time.

Now, I can deliver HD on BluRay. I'm still trying to figure out how to squeeze a third monitor into the setup. Love the dual-monitors for editing, will only go back to single if you hold a gun to my head.

Ain't technology grand?

Beanbag
 

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Beanbag, that's a nice setup. I majored in TV and radio production back in the '70s and have dabbled a bit in digital video editing, but I don't yet have a system with sufficient hard drive space or memory to make a decent go of it.

Any particular hardware recommendations for video capture? I currently have a mini-DV camcorder and also want to do a bit of analog-to-digital conversion from older media.
 
For myself I've gone 2 24", one in landscape, one in portrait. For reviewing documents the portrait monitor does well. Internet usage, games, and movies in full screen mode on the landscape one.

I'm not sure what AMDs HD5000 and HD6000 do for using a third monitor with EyeFinity. A third monitor in portrait mode could do well if you could get used to it. Looks like you've got the room for it.

The two monitors you have, 1080p or 1920*1200?
 
Astreja:
You can do both SD (standard definition) and HD editing on fairly modest systems. I started out with a dual-core Pentium D reconditioned machine, then built up an Athalon 64x2 machine from scratch when I started to get "serious." What I've found is that the editing process is a lot more painless if you have a machine JUST for editing video. All my editing machines were purpose-built, usually consisting of the largest case I could afford (better cooling and ventilation), the motherboard, a video card (forget using the video on the motherboard, you need a card with its own video RAM), a Firewire card for capturing from the camcorder, one hard drive for the software and operating system, a second hard drive to store your projects on, and a DVD write drive for burning the finished video.

SATA hard drives are cheap these days. A 300 gig drive (if you can find them that small these days) goes for about $40. If you can't fit your project onto a 300 gig hard drive, then you're shooting way too much footage :)

The main thing I recommend is to install the operating system yourself using what's called an OEM (original equipment manufacturer) disk (this assumes you're using Windows). An OEM disk comes from Microsoft, NOT from HP or whatever manufacturer made the computer. They load the system with all kinds of junk utilities, drivers, free offers, and software that they think is spiffy, but actually drags performance down, and it can be next to impossible to clean all that junk out of the system. A MS OEM disk loads ONLY the operating system.

Greenlines:
The monitors are "only" 1680x1050. They're legacy monitors, the biggest ones I could afford a few years back, and at the time cost me almost $500 each. 23" full-HD monitors these days go for less than $200, so that's on my upgrade list in the near future.

There are several stages of involvement when you get into video. At the first stage, whatever you want will cost you $200. After that, you reach the level where whatever you want to add will cost $500, then $1000. I've reached the four-figure level and am still climbing. I joke that I should have gotten into drugs instead of video -- it's cheaper in the long run.

Beanbag
 
I'm looking forward to the day when 30"s are reasonably priced, myself.

My knowledge of video recording equipment is poor. Right now I know my phone can't shoot HD video without having encoding issues, I'm guessing. Probably something in the background mucking it up.

I will agree that going for a desktop with an OEM installation DVD from Microsoft, and building ones own box, would be a good way to go. Though to get a huge jump, I would assume having an SSD (solid state drive) for the OS drive and working drive would be good for video work. That bumps up the price a bit though.
 
Thanks, Beanbag! I assemble my own computers and install the OS from OEM disks now, so no problems there. A whole new system is on the agenda for 2011, so I'll make a point of getting a strong video card and a good-quality DVD writer.

The new system will almost certainly be biased towards media production; I'm not much of a gamer, and my other systems (Ubuntu desktop and WinXP laptop) are more than adequate for writing and surfing the Internet.
 
GreenLines said:
I will agree that going for a desktop with an OEM installation DVD from Microsoft, and building ones own box, would be a good way to go. Though to get a huge jump, I would assume having an SSD (solid state drive) for the OS drive and working drive would be good for video work. That bumps up the price a bit though.
Click to expand...
My personal opinion is that SSD's are highly over-rated. --IF-- I was working on a task that was disk-intensive or required fast boot-up times or required minimal power drain, then I'd use them. For instance, I keep checking the prices on the ones around 160 gigs with the idea of replacing the drive in my netbook to see if I can get 6-8 hours on a single charge.

Surprisingly, video editing is NOT that dependent on fast hard drives. You just need lots of reliable storage. I buy 300 to 500 gig SATA drives when they are on sale, and dedicate one drive per project. They sell cages that install in a 5.25" drive bay that let you swap the entire SATA drive like a cartridge from the front, making it easy to work on and archive projects. If you look at the picture, you'll see five SATA drives stacked beneath the left monitor. The drive slot on the computer is just above the white rectangle in the center of the case, the black rectangle with the blue light.

Video editing is like word processing, in that the computer spends most of its time idling while you move blocks of video around, trim this, tweak that, etc. You can actually edit on relatively low-powered machines. The crunch comes when you have to render, i.e. you've applied some effect to a clip like color correction, chromakey, or fancy transitions. THAT's when a smoking fast multicore processor comes in handy.

I was quite happy using relatively slow dual-core processors UNTIL I moved to HD. I could afford to wait the extra time for renders in SD. It gave me a chance to go get a drink, stretch, walk around, and so on. In HD, however, everything suddenly took four times as long to render, so I was "forced" to get a faster machine and went to an I5.

I'm watching the AMD Octocore developments with interest. They should be out 1st quarter 2011. It might be fun to have eight processor cores instead of four.

Beanbag
 
Upgrade in the works!!!

Just came in with two 24" Viewsonic 1920x1080 monitors, plus a pair of swing/shift/tilt mounts for the monitors. Tomorrow, the old 22" 1680x1050 monitors will be moved to my backup editing system, and the new ones mounted to the rack, lovingly color-calibrated, and heavily used.

Regards;
Beanbag
 
Update completed.

Just got through squeezing the two new monitors into the edit bay rack. Turns out I didn't need the swing/shift/tilt mounts, so they'll be going back for refund in a few minutes.

Color calibration yielded a pleasant surprise. Usually, when I color cal using the Huey Pro calibration widget, there is a noticeable change in the appearance when I switch from corrected to uncorrected. In this case, neither monitor shows any appreciable shift between the two, meaning both monitors came from the factory pretty much dead on. There's an advantage to buying a good name-brand monitor.

Well, I'm off to Comp USA to return the mounts. Figure I'd better do it today, rather than wait till after the holidays.

Beanbag
 
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