Hi there... I'm a computer nerd, and someone asked me to build them a PC for DV editing. Personally, I've never gotten into the topic and I know very little about it (I mainly build my PC's for programming and digital audio recording), so I'm not up on what the special requirements are. Btw, the software they will be using is Adobe Premier Pro.

Here's what I'm looking to find out:

1) What kind of CPU/Mobo combos should I be using. I'd like to go with Dual Core, and in the audio world, AMD has a better offering at the moment, but if Intel has proven to be better for DV, then I'd like to know that. Is there a specific combo that has proven fast/stable for DV editors?

2) What kind of video card do I need to get for this? I went to Adobe's site, and when looking at the requirements for Pro 2.0, it said I should basically get an ATI X800 or one of the nVidia QUADRO's. Are those the only kinds I should be looking at? If so, which one is better as far as price/perf.

3) Do I have to get a capture card as well?

4) Is there a specific Hard Drive that I should look at? I'm assuming a very large external hard drive is recommended (much like for digital audio), or is that not the case?



Any help is much appreciated.



WATYF

I'm not a pro, but:

It seems to me that AMD has a slight advantage (judging by 3d & 2d content creation & video encoding times), but if you want to get one of the hardcore video-editing cards like a Matrox RTX100 or Axio, you pretty much have to go with intel. It seems to me that under no circumstances should you get an AMD if you're getting an awesome, $4,000+ video-editing computer. Recent AMD chipsets are not compatibile with anything that Matrox has put out, but I'm not sure how well they work with alternatives such as Canopus, etc.

If you're just getting an ATI or nVidia videocard though, I think either one should be fine.

I believe the answer to this question is this:

If you have firewire/USB 2.0 on the motherboard... no. These can handle importing from your digital camcorder.

Unless you plan to do things like bring in a feed from something that isn't firewire/USB... like coaxial (TV cable), yes... then yes... you'll need something. A videocard that supports it... or a capture card.

I can't recommend that, unless you plan to move it from computer to computer to computer often. USB2.0/firewire isn't nearly as fast as SATA150 or SATA300, and with video files, you're going to be using your hard drive quite a bit.

OK... So an external drive is not recommended then, eh? Sorry... that's pretty common in the digital audio world... I wasn't sure if digital video was the same. I can just get a huge internal drive then.

Thanks for the help... any other input is appreciated.


WATYF

Well, SATA150 drives offer 3-4x the bandwidth of firewire/usb2.0, and SATA300 offers 6-8x the bandwidth, and since you're going to be messing around with massive files, I, personally, couldn't recommend using an external hard drive.

That said, I'm pretty new to video-editing... so maybe somebody with more experience can chime in.

My figures (bandwidth comparisons) are correct... but I'm not sure how much of a difference these things make while you're actually editing, but I'm sure if you have less than a gig of RAM and plan to edit videos that're over 2 minutes long, it makes a difference.

If you are familiar with Drive setups for Audio installations then you should be ok with whatever you choose. Obviuosly a scsi raid array would be the best but most costly so work down from there - Speed is the key and if your client has the budget go for peace of mind with mirrored raid aswell - i recommend a 4/6/8 disk setup.

With the Graphics card dont go speanding loads of money. My own system houses a midrange MSI NVidia GeForce 6600 256mb card. For video editing it's fine. Unless your client intends to use appz that really hammer the opengl engine capabilities of certain appz (3d studio max and so on) you don't need to spen loads of money here. My card handles most of what I throw at it and I do some very big After Effects compositions. Works a treat.

The main key to a video machine is Disks. Because you are dealing with such large files the machine needs to be able to use em quickly. Of course fast CPU and as much ram as you can afford will help too.

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