I'm know you've been asked this many a-time, and I've been looking through the site and Ed Gaskells book as well as talking to a couple of PC sellers but I am still unsure how best to obtain/set up a system for video editing.

I have about 40 hours of Hi8 video and a load of standard 8mm cine (some with sound and 1hr long) which I want to save in digital format for prosperity.

I have a cine to video converter box and a Sony DCR-PC350E DV camcorder with AV in and firewire out.
I have done a couple of 'event' videos in Hi8, editing down onto VHS which I enjoyed but it is limited, time consuming and suffers quality degradation. I'd like to use my DV camcorder and do more event videos, editing and then storing the results on CD/DVD. I don't think I'm missing any video hardware to get the cine and Hi8 into a pc via my DV camcorder but it’s the h/w and s/w spec for a pc system that I'm stuck on. I want semi-professional results but don't want to spend more than about £600. I could probably build up a pc and have a friend who has built pc's (1 for video editing), but with so many manufacturers and variables I don't want to make a mistake and get weird hic-ups or problems because of the way I've configured a system.

I have seen a shop built system with AMD Athlon 64 3000+ Winfast/Foxconn motherboard, 160Gb SATA 7200rpm, 1Gb/400MHz DDRAM, Radeon 9550 256Mb graphics card with TV out, DVD RW, on board firewire, 6 USB2 ports and 17"SVGA monitor. Also Dell have a P4, 3GHz, 256Mb RAM, 2x512DDRAM400, 160Gb IDE, Firewire PCI card and 17" FP display. Both just over my budget, but how do I choose? Is on board firewire better than via PCI card? Is SVGA better than FP? Is intel better than AMD and SATA vs IDE? If I buy the individual bits I may get a higher spec, but which manufacturers do I use? And then what editing software to buy? Help - I can't get over this hurdle!!

If you buy the individual components you'll save lots of money and build your own top notch system (or find a skillful friend to do it). The rest, what can I say, "Is Intel better than AMD" - you're talking religion here...

thanks svhs, I figured buying the bits seperately would give me more for my money, but its being sure that the bits are reliable and all work together. As for the ultimate question - I'm open minded.......

Your best bet is to spec a PC out and post the components in this thread - someone like Mike will tell you instantly whether they will work together!

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Dont go near it!!! - Foxconn are the biggest piles of crap I have ever come across. Poorly written firmware and cheap components. Make sure the motherboard is a well known brand

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www.irishmark.net / MyYouTube / www.tandem.tv

Amen to that!

Stick to an Asus branded motherboard (or a Gigabyte branded one if you can't get an Asus). There are a few others that are okay but you can't really go wrong with Asus or Gigabyte.

As for AMD vs Intel - most of the time AMD beats intel, but if you're running a single core system, the Intel processors are faster at video encoding than their equivalent AMD version (although if you choose a dual core processor, AMD wallops the Christ out of intel)

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wow guys- thanx for the clear advice, its exactly the help I need. I intend to scour the forum and pull out the well respected components / configurations and go shopping!

Forum friends here's a system proposed by a work mate, what do you reckon....its a bit over my budget, could I lower the cost somehow, or might that impact what I want to do with it?

Asus A8N-SLi Deluxe, ATX, DDDR400, PCI-E, 2 x Gbit Lan, USB 2.0, 1394, 8ch Audio, 4 x SATA, Raid 5

256Mb Sapphire PCI-E ATI X300SE HYPERMEMORY TV/Out DVI

1Gb (2 x 512 Mb) Corsair TwinX, DDR, PC3200C2PT, Cas 2

2 x 250Gb Maxtor Maxline III 24x7 Reliability (7200rpm,16MB) SATA II NCQ

160Gb Samsung SpinPoint™ HD160JJ (7200rpm,8mb) - SATA II NCQ

2 x NEC ND-4550A Black 16x16 DVD±RW Dual Layer DVD-Writer

CoolerMaster Centurion 5 Case Black Body

480W Tagan 2Force SLi Ultra Quiet 21db PSU

Logitech Cordless Internet Desktop Pro - Black Keyboard & Optical Mouse

Used 19" CRT.

Of course I'll need to get the editing software. Please let me have your thoughts, thanks.

Now that's lookin loke a good platform that will easily upgradablr. 2 ways u could save some pennies are
why get 2 dvd burners - just get one.
Cordless - £50 for a cordless set versus £15 for standard set with optical mouse.

You could go further and only get one of the 250gb maxtors. the raid does provide performance but you will be able to edit with a single disk and u can always upgrade to raid at a later date.

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www.irishmark.net / MyYouTube / www.tandem.tv

In case anyone wondered where I've been for the last 4 weeks (doubtfull) I went shopping, bought the bits above, except the RAID disks and got a 128 graphics card instead of 256, and built up my system. I got one jumper in the wrong place on my ATA drive (somehow didn't order SATA!) which gave me windows loading problem, but a good friend sorted that out. Now I've taken an hour of event video imported it with Bills movie maker, used nearly all the transitions and am about to add sound! I'm really quite pleased with the system capability and processing times are reasonable. I practiced with 15mins of video and burned it to DVD, using standard DV-AVI format importing from DV camera and exporting/burning using NERO software but found some noise problems as flashing lights on the original video caused pixalation and loss of clarity on the DVD. This was not apparent on the captured video when played back from the PC so I re-burned the video using the High Quality setting in NERO, this used 1G but improved the image stability. I'm happy with that but it does mean I'm using more DVD space so won't get much more than an hour onto it.

So my friends from all that I have a couple of questions (of course!):

1) when my system comes out of standby my cpu temperature is raised to about 40degC. After a few minutes of running this drops to about 30C. The mobo stays about 42C. Are these temps ok or should the cpu be kept cooler in standby, is there a system bug?

2) am I employing the most lossless process for quality, DV-AVI in via firewire and out DV-AVI to DVD? Is there any system aspects to improve on?

3) can I get more on a DVD using other compression techniques when I'm using the high quality setting/burning?

4) when I get different editing s/w how will it work with a video created with Win Movie Maker? Will the fades and transitions be editable or would they be 'part' of the video and only able to be cut out rather than changed? (I may decide that using all Bills transistions wasn't such a good idea after all!)

It's been a longish journey but I love the ability of digital editing, although my 'analogue productions' so far seem to have been quicker, probably because there was less editing, because it weren't so flexible (and also I try to shoot with minimal editing in mind).

Next phases are to get my Hi8 imported, then the cines (what else to do on these long winter nights?)

Any other tips (not for the previous question), maybe what s/w to move up to?

Thanks to all who read and feedback.