Building a PC

Nora · #1 (**permalink**) 06-12-2005, 01:17 PM

Ok, in my earlier thread I asked about using a laptop for editing and you guys convinced me that was not the way to go. Now I'm trying to configure a system for a desktop.

I have Premiere Pro 1.5 and have been using it on another computer. I believe the firewire port is part of the video card, but I can't recall what the card was.

I have been reading about real-time video editing cards in this forum and wonder if that is something i should be thinking about.

Here is what I have selected so far:

Asus P5 GDI
P4 540
1 Gig DDR400 (or maybe a dual channel?)
2 x 250G SATA hard drives (running with RAID)
16X DVD ROM
NEC 352OA Burner (16X)
Nvidea G Force 6800
Windows XP Home

Will this work? I don't think anything here has a firewire port. I do have cheap firewire card I bought some time ago and never used...

Appreciate the advice. Thanks!

Nora

Digital Dan · #2 (**permalink**) 06-12-2005, 02:00 PM

Hi Nora,
I'm just starting out with editing but have been reading quite a lot on the subject. only having 2 drives in raid will give a big performance boost but is also very unsafe. If one drive crashes you will loose all your data. Better would be to invest in an extra single drive for your applications and then your 2 drives in raid for capturing. 500Meg seems quite a lot but depends if you want to save more then 1 project on it. You might save a lot taking only 2 x 120gig in raid0. With the money you save you could buy an extra WD raptor disk for the applications.

If you work with premiere pro a simple firewire card will do, capturecards have the advantage to work with analog as well but they come in very different priceclasses. From what I heared from the real pro's is that they suggest to first buy your capturecard and then build your system around it. I planned to this also but it was way out of my budget. For that reason I bought a pc with a firewirecard. I guess that if you can afford it you should buy a good capture card, on the adobe site there is a list of certified third party capture cards -http://www.adobe.com/products/premiere/6cards.html so that you are sure that premiere will have no problem with it.

Mike Thorpe · #3 (**permalink**) 06-12-2005, 08:02 PM

Nora - I'm guesing you mean 1GB DUal Channel DDR400 RAM. The motherboard is a good choice, nice and stable, but from my memory, I don't think it has firewire on it. Personally, for video editing, I wouldn't run the system in RAID though, i'd use one drie as your boot drive and storing all your other PC stuff, and your second drive solely for video.

Nora · #4 (**permalink**) 06-14-2005, 02:56 PM

Quote:

Nora - I'm guesing you mean 1GB DUal Channel DDR400 RAM

Yes, that's what I got.

I was anxious about using RAID0 because of the loss of everything if a drive crashes. I had long discussions with my tech advisors (my husband who's an IT professional, and my son who's a 14 year-old computer prodigy) They convinced me that the speed I could get with RAID would make a huge difference to my editing. Drives don't crash all that often (famous last words?) And I should be backing everything up anyway. At least spindles of CDs are pretty cheap if you look around for sales, so I will be doing weekly backups of everything.

You're right about the firewire. I have a SYBA PCI multimedia combo card I bought to try to get firewire in a different system but that system had other problems and I didn't wind up using it, so we've installed it in the new machine. Hopefully it will work. My son built my system yesterday and when he gets home from his Social Studies exam this afternoon we'll start loading drivers and programmes and see what happens.

Is anyone familiar with the SYBA multimedia card? Is it just a firewire conduit to the system, or does it have other features? Is it any good? I did some research on it back when I bought it and it sounded good, but every manufacturer will say their product is great and I was under huge time pressure...

Thanks for the advice!

Nora

Nora · #5 (**permalink**) 06-15-2005, 01:27 PM

Ok, here's another question. To run the two 250G drives in RAID 0, do I need a third drive?

Nora

Mike Thorpe · #6 (**permalink**) 06-15-2005, 01:31 PM

I wouldn't use RAID, but that's just my personal preference. For video editing, I would use one HD as the OS and one for video editing, but what you're doing will work. You will only need the two drives.

Not heard of the card though unfortunately.

Nora · #7 (**permalink**) 06-15-2005, 01:37 PM

I asked about the thrid drive because we are having some difficulty getting the computer to recognize both HD. BIOS recognizes both but once Windows XP is installed it doesn't seem to want to read the second drive. My husband, who has had RAID running on his computer for over a year, said he had to install a third drive to make it all work.

Any suggestions?

Nora

Mike Thorpe · #8 (**permalink**) 06-15-2005, 01:40 PM

Windows should recognise 2 drives set up in RAID as one single "drive" anyway.

Nora · #9 (**permalink**) 06-15-2005, 02:34 PM

Yes, I realize that. I'm afraid I am not the computer whiz in the house. Unfortunately those who are have let me know something of the problem and then gone out to their respective things for the day, leaving me to ponder how and when I will get this beautiful machine working.

Apparently the way it is set up it will not work and it has something to do with the inability of the OS to access the RAID configuration. The solution proposed to me was to set up and independent hard drive for the OS, which works well on my husband's computer.

Guess I'll go read my motherboard manual and try to figure it out. It's not bad enough that it's very technical. It also appears to have been translated directly from Korean or Chinese by someone with a bilingual dictionary and no functional experience with the English language whatsoever. Sigh

Thanks for your input.

Nora