Semi-good video editing/encoding PC?

[Calavaro]

I have the pleasure to get to build a nice semi-professional PC for video editing and encoding. It would be home movies recorded with your standard videocamera.
My first specific question would be, to people who edit and encode video, what would be a better option CPU wise? Would a A64 or a P4 (greater than 3Ghz) be better?
Also, does a striped raid solution (or other raid) improve performace noticeably?
I gather a a lot of RAM would be needed. The budget limits me initially to 1GB.
What about video card? Would it be preferable to go with topend last gen x800 or 6800 or is a r3xx good enough? Naturally it would be, if ATI, an A-I-W.

Any other suggestions or thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks.

 

[mhenley]

the A64 being a 64 bit processor would be the best way to go. If you're really an enthusiast with HDD speed (which is usually the #1 bottleneck when encoding) you might want to drop the money for a SCSI setup and go with Raptor drives (warning, they're not the quietest, but man can they perform).

Whichever HDD solution you go for, running them in a RAID 0 (stripe) will increase performance overall, at the sacrifice of security. If you are running multiple drives in RAID 0 and one drive fails, you lose all the information across the whole RAID because of the information being spanned.

You don't need a high end rendering video card for encoding, because its not dependant on that at all. If you're wanting to make this into a gaming PC as well, then of course, get a high end graphics card. An ATI AIW with a Rage 128 chipset will perform the same as a Radeon 9600 AIW when it comes to encoding.

Also, for encoding, you won't see a performance increase by having a gig of ram, only if you're doing editing where the files are above 3 or 4 hundred meg will you see a performance boost.

 

[Calavaro]

the A64 being a 64 bit processor would be the best way to go. If you're really an enthusiast with HDD speed (which is usually the #1 bottleneck when encoding) you might want to drop the money for a SCSI setup and go with Raptor drives (warning, they're not the quietest, but man can they perform).

Whichever HDD solution you go for, running them in a RAID 0 (stripe) will increase performance overall, at the sacrifice of security. If you are running multiple drives in RAID 0 and one drive fails, you lose all the information across the whole RAID because of the information being spanned.

You don't need a high end rendering video card for encoding, because its not dependant on that at all. If you're wanting to make this into a gaming PC as well, then of course, get a high end graphics card. An ATI AIW with a Rage 128 chipset will perform the same as a Radeon 9600 AIW when it comes to encoding.

Also, for encoding, you won't see a performance increase by having a gig of ram, only if you're doing editing where the files are above 3 or 4 hundred meg will you see a performance boost.

Thanks for the very useful info.
The files will be much larger than 3-400 megs. They will probably range from 1GB to several more.
I'll stuff a 9600A-I-W in there. Will give decent gaming performance (good enough for the person wanting the PC) while giving all the necessary features for the applications wanted.

So how does the A64 at a similar price point compare to a 3.0ghz P4 (HT, 800"mhz"bus)?

I suppose a couple of SATA Raptors striped for the encoding would suffice. With another HDD to keep windows, programs, et al, safe.

Again, thanks for the info.

 

[adi]

As you can see here, the P4 is better for most encoding.

http://www.techreport.com/reviews/2004q1/pentium4-3.4ghz/index.x?pg=7
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2065&p=7
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=1956&p=21

1gb should be fine to start with. If you have the money, SCSI would be nice, but with a lot of motherboards having 2+ SATA onboard, that can do raid 0 decently, raptors would be a decent choice as well.

Another option if your budget allows is to get a dual xeon or opteron, with a single CPU for now, with the option of upgrading to a 2nd later. This will be more expensive, for the processors and the ram, but very quick and will be responsive to do other things when encoding.
http://www.techreport.com/reviews/2004q2/opteron-x50/index.x?pg=6


For semi-professional, I would stick with the fastest P4 you can buy with 1gb and sata. Procesor speed would (IMO) be more important that disk subsystem, although I haven't seen any bencharkes to prove either side.

 

[mhenley]

Thanks for the very useful info.
The files will be much larger than 3-400 megs. They will probably range from 1GB to several more.
I'll stuff a 9600A-I-W in there. Will give decent gaming performance (good enough for the person wanting the PC) while giving all the necessary features for the applications wanted.

So how does the A64 at a similar price point compare to a 3.0ghz P4 (HT, 800"mhz"bus)?

I suppose a couple of SATA Raptors striped for the encoding would suffice. With another HDD to keep windows, programs, et al, safe.

Again, thanks for the info.

Always remember, AMD will always be cheaper, and clock-for-clock AMD will always outperform Intel. Whenever you look at processor comparisons, think about the AMD true clock speed instead of their rating.

For example, in that first link, the highest performing AMD processor is the A64 FX-53...which runs at 2.4 ghz, and its going head to head with the P4E's running at 3 and 3.2

for pricing comparison, I will always recommend www.pricewatch.com

good luck, and happy computing.

 

[darktiger]

P4's are typically good for Video editing/encoding. But I would still pic A64. Once software comes out for the A64, A64 will be faster. So it is more of future proofing your investment...

 

[Clockworks]

Depends, Adobe Premiere is heavily optomized for P4 HT, so if you use that, the performance will be greater with it. Unless it comes out as a 64-bit program.

 

[Talonz]

Definately stick with a P4 with HT for encoding.

I would go with 1 GB of ram, not because it will speed the encoding up, but it will make the computer run considerably faster for everything else.

As for video, I would go with a middle of the road 9600XT AIW. It's sold at a good price, has everything you need, and is decent for gaming.

Don't worry about SCSI or RAID 0 arrays. When you're encoding video, the disk speed is NOT a huge factor, as it's almost always limited by the CPU speed. I would install two drives (maybe 2 200gb drives), but I would not RAID them. RAID will eat up your CPU cycles, and since it's your bottleneck, you don't want to make the situation worse. Also, having two drives (one as system, the other for files) is less risky than a RAID array, even though it sounds fancy.

 

[mhenley]

Definately stick with a P4 with HT for encoding.

I would go with 1 GB of ram, not because it will speed the encoding up, but it will make the computer run considerably faster for everything else.

As for video, I would go with a middle of the road 9600XT AIW. It's sold at a good price, has everything you need, and is decent for gaming.

Don't worry about SCSI or RAID 0 arrays. When you're encoding video, the disk speed is NOT a huge factor, as it's almost always limited by the CPU speed. I would install two drives (maybe 2 200gb drives), but I would not RAID them. RAID will eat up your CPU cycles, and since it's your bottleneck, you don't want to make the situation worse. Also, having two drives (one as system, the other for files) is less risky than a RAID array, even though it sounds fancy.

What kind of crack are you smoking...thinking that HDD speeds isn't a factor? When we're talking about the kind of CPU and RAM that he's talking about, the HDD is most certainly going to be the biggest factor in how quickly the file is written. He already had the perfect idea going, one for system, and then a fast array for the files that he'd be working with. If he was to have a single SATA drive, it would be a huge cramp, and not allow him to fully maximize his system's potential.

Also, the comment darktiger made about future potential made a lot of sense to me, I'm going to stress my point again for an A64.

 

[Dreaz]

the A64 being a 64 bit processor would be the best way to go. If you're really an enthusiast with HDD speed (which is usually the #1 bottleneck when encoding) you might want to drop the money for a SCSI setup and go with Raptor drives (warning, they're not the quietest, but man can they perform).

Whichever HDD solution you go for, running them in a RAID 0 (stripe) will increase performance overall, at the sacrifice of security. If you are running multiple drives in RAID 0 and one drive fails, you lose all the information across the whole RAID because of the information being spanned.

You don't need a high end rendering video card for encoding, because its not dependant on that at all. If you're wanting to make this into a gaming PC as well, then of course, get a high end graphics card. An ATI AIW with a Rage 128 chipset will perform the same as a Radeon 9600 AIW when it comes to encoding.

Also, for encoding, you won't see a performance increase by having a gig of ram, only if you're doing editing where the files are above 3 or 4 hundred meg will you see a performance boost.

Most of what he says is true: the videocard, the hard drives, but certainly not the Proc

For video encoding/editing P4 with HT is the way to go, period. Even if programs do get 64bit thrown in there(and that'll be long off since Windows 64 isn't even coming out this year or most of next[I doubt even next]) you'll be wasting it. A64 is mostly a marketing gimmick, well, the 64 part although it does do 32bit apps very well thanks to the mem controller.

Anyways, P4 with HT is the best to go.

 

[Talonz]

What kind of crack are you smoking...thinking that HDD speeds isn't a factor? When we're talking about the kind of CPU and RAM that he's talking about, the HDD is most certainly going to be the biggest factor in how quickly the file is written. He already had the perfect idea going, one for system, and then a fast array for the files that he'd be working with. If he was to have a single SATA drive, it would be a huge cramp, and not allow him to fully maximize his system's potential.

Also, the comment darktiger made about future potential made a lot of sense to me, I'm going to stress my point again for an A64.

Yes, in how quickly a file is written. But most of the time is in fact spent on the CPU cycles, and not waiting for the hard drive. When was the last time you spent a long time waiting for your hard drive to write, instead of waiting for your cpu to proccess the video? There is no point in sacrificing security and processor cycles for the slight speed increase you will get with a RAID 0.

 

[mhenley]

i don't remember saying that he had to have a RAID 0, I remember suggesting a Raptor drive, even though they're loud.

 

[ehZn]

Incredible that no one suggested a 3rd party video capture/encoder card like a Hauppauge 250/350...this would improve video quality over an A-I-W *crap* and take the cpu almost entirely out of the mix (1-2% utilization during encoding) while allowing for a multitude of other functions.

Remember though that good software makes all the difference, no matter what hardware you end up with.

 

[Major_A]

Apple G5. *Puts on flame suit.*

 

[mobiux]

Apple G5. *Puts on flame suit.*

If you don't have to use other PC apps, i completely agree.
Any home PC setup that editted Cold Mountain, can't be all bad.