I have been busting my ass for about a year now, going from minimum wage job to minimum wage job, trying to save money in order to build THE HD video editing machine (my ideological film career depends on it I suppose).

Though I have an idea of what I want it the computer to be composed of, I'd like to hear the opinions of more experienced computer builders for their opinions on the greatest HD video editing machine I can build (money is not an option). I'm not looking for overkill, nor bragging rights on how fast my machine works... simply a damn good computer to make an HD film.

Thus far I have a Pentium Core Duo E6700 processor, so I'm thinking of going with an Asus P5W DH Deluxe motherboard. I've also had my eye on the Nvidia Geforce 8600. But maybe this all sounds wrong to you guys which is why I'm throwing it out there.

What do you guys think would make "The" HDV machine.

Also, what are your opinions on the i/o cards such as Blackmagic. I'm not too familiar exactly with the science of it all, but if I wanted to make HDV short films and perhaps a feature down the road, would I NEED a blackmagic deck link?

I only edit HDV and have no idea what a 'blackmagic deck link' is so I guess you do not need one.

For the record I can comfortably edit HDV on my 3GHz P4 machine running 2Gb ram and cheap graphics card which is all over 3 years old now.

Any core-duo machine with a decent amount of RAM and a half decent set of hard drives will be more than enough. One thing not discussed though is s/w. What editor are you using or intend to use? YOu may find that a s/w package worthy of the task will cost more then the h/w - unless you get some realt-time hardware card (Matrox?) put in there.

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I'm not young enough to know everything!

Looking at your selection, your making a gaming system.

However, I build computer systems and servers and have been following HD tech and system hardware..

Firstly the board you selected is good.
I would go for a quad core processor, most of the software are gearing towards this. for comparison. my AMD 4600 V Q6600 encodes video 7 times faster. ( my guess from memory, its around 10 times faster than a single core)

For Memory(RAM) I would look at 2 or 4 gigabytes of faster DDR than the FSB.

For storage (hard drives) you should be looking at SATA2 Hard drives, the price has dropped and a 500 gig hard drive is cheap.

Make sure you get a good power supply to go with it all 650 watts ATX2 should fit your needs.

Personally I went for the ATI 1950 Pro VIVO card, for obvious reasons, rendering and input.

Vision wise I went for two Samsung SW206BW monitors - but they just do HD specs but are very good in there specs. (1680x1050)

Optical storage would have to be blue ray, 24 Gig discs will help you keep all that video.

On a side note the spec's I just said are vista and HDCP compliant systems.

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Need Pro Computer advice?

I am just entering HD video editing. I have a Sony SR1 shooting to the new AVCHD format (a questionable choice, I know) and am in the market for a new computer for Photoshop and HD editing. While cost of the new machine is no object, I'm not interested in paying out useless money for little or no benefit. Until reading your message above, I thought a superfast machine would make a serious difference in HD editing and was thinking of an overclocked quadcore QX6850 and a WD 150Gb Raptor, and maybe even Vista-64 so I could take advantage of 4Gb or more of RAM. But, your message suggests that would be a waste of money.

So...just how far up the hardware ladder should I go to get fast performance without without wasting money?

While I was dreaming of a high end machine, I went over to Digital Storm computers and spec'd a hotrod (under the impression I needed one), and the interim specs from my current ignorant state are as follows:

Copy of Specifications:
Case: Digital Storm Twister ULTRA (Black Anodized Aluminum Finish)
Power Supply: 850W Thermaltake (8800 GTX SLI Compatible) (Silent Toughpower Edition)
Processor: Intel Core 2 Quad (TwisterBoost Enhanced) QX6800 Extreme 3.33GHz (1333MHz FSB)
Motherboard: nVidia 680i Core 2 Quad (By: eVGA) (nForce 680i SLI) (A1 Revision)
Memory: 4GB DDR2 Corsair at 1066MHz Dominator (Dual Channel) (Extreme-Performance)
Floppy / Media: Sony 1.44MB Floppy (Black Edition)
Hard Drive 1: 150GB Western Digital Raptor (10K RPM) (16MB Cache) (SATA) (Extreme Speed)
Hard Drive 2: 1TB (Western Digital / Seagate) (Raid 0 Setup) (7200 RPM) (SATA) (Extreme Speed)
Raid Option: - No Thanks
Optical Drive 1: DVD-ROM/CD-ROM (DVD Reader 16x / CD Reader 40x)
Optical Drive 2: BLU-RAY/DVD±R/RW/CD-R/RW (BLU-RAY / DVD Writer 18x / CD-Writer 48x)
Network Card: High Speed Network Port (Supports High-Speed Cable / DSL / Network Connections)
Modem: - No Thanks
Video Card: nVidia GeForce 8800GTX 768MB (By: eVGA / Asus) (PCI-Express)
TV Tuner: - No Thanks
Sound Card: Creative Labs Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeGamer (Up to 7.1 Channel) (Recommended)
Physics Card: - No Thanks
Cooling: Air Cooled Stage 3 (Silent Artic Cooling (TwisterBoost Overclocked)
Case Lighting: - No Thanks
Round Cables: Enhanced Interior Air Flow (Optical Drive & Floppy Cables (Black Edition)
User Manual: Personalized Platinum Digital Storm Binder (Includes Paperwork/Benchmarks/CDs/Manuals)
Windows OS: Microsoft Windows XP Professional (Includes Service Pack 2)
Restore Kit: Digital Storm Specialized Recovery System (DVD Image Based)
Protection: - No Thanks
Office: - No Thanks
LCD Display: Samsung 24 inch (Widescreen) (Black) (High-Performance Gaming Display)
Surge Shield: APC SurgeArrest Personal PER7 (7 Outlet) 120V Surge Protector
Speakers: Logitech 5.1 System (Black Edition) (Model X540) (Includes Subwoofer)
Keyboard: Microsoft Multimedia Desktop 2.0 (Multimedia Keyboard + Optical Wheel Mouse)
Mouse: - No Thanks my keyboard comes with a mouse
Warranty: 3 Year Platinum Care Extended Parts & Labor Warranty
Support: Lifetime Toll-Free Platinum Care Technical Support


I am now assuming this is complete overkill, but...

Any suggestions muchly appreciated. Michael

Sounds like just a wish list ... you can actaully buy an off the shelf machince from Fujitsu Siemens that has enough spec to comfortably edit HD using premier pro.CS3. Just try and avoid Vista and spec one with XP... (you can still do this)

gone are the days of spending £5000 on an edit suite for most producers... thankfully

Appreciate the input, Excite. When you talk of a Fujitsu Siemens machine what specific machine are you talking about and/or what general specs? Dual Core, Quad Core? And, unless things have changed recently, I unfortunately cannot use Adobe Premiere Pro as it does not edit AVCHD...do you recommend another app for editing AVCHD (I've looked at Sony Vegas).

you can try a

Scaleo Pi 2662 - Core 2 Quad Q6600, 2GB, 500GB, see link below

Cheap Desktops UK - Fujitsu Siemens Scaleo Desktop PCs | Scaleo P | Scaleo H - Fujitsu Siemens Laptops, Notebooks and Desktop PCs | Amilo | Lifebook | Scaleo | Pocket Loox

They will upgrade the memory to 4gb should you need it .. Niether Premier Pro or Sony Vegas actually need a quad core processor.. in fact there is little or no software that actually does, but its a good future proof buy.

for editing your AVCHD i would go for Sony Vegas 7.0... I sometimes use it as an alternative for the sound mixing and fx features

good luck