Video editing build from scratch.

[Sakaris]

I need to assemble a system within the next month for the purpose of HD video editing and gaming. Later next year I'd like to be able to equip it to capture uncompressed HD. I'm in California and my budget is $3200 US max including shipping and taxes. I have a mouse, keyboard, and speakers to bring to this build, and I need everything under the hood, mb, case, cpu, psu, cooling, RAM, video card, HDD's. I don't care if its bulky.

What I have in mind so far is

SUPER CSE-745TQ-R1200B - case includes 1200w redundant power supply & fans
Supermicro X8DAH+-F, I considered a TYAN s7025 but it has a comparatively limited RAM capacity
2 x Xeon 5504 or 5520 (don't plan to OC)
Radeon 5850
Western Digital RE3's of some variety
2 x Cogage True Spirit with bolt thru mounting kit for cooling (assuming the kit works on this board)
12GB of RAM (6x2GB), ECC REG, probably crucial. Single or dual rank??
Windows 7 Ultimate, need a brand spankin new copy
Monitor over 20" @ 1920x1080 or higher. I've resisted a move from CRT, but when your trinitron dies its time to move on.

Whatever board I end up with needs at least one (preferably two) x16 slots for graphics and two x8 slots for future RAID and HD capture cards. Since pcie seems to be the new standard (yes it has been that long since I've built a box) I wouldn't mind extra slots.

I like the DP Supermicro boards that I've seen, but the only cases that seem to fit EE-ATX boards are expensive Supermicro chassis. I haven't drilled holes and modded a case for a board like this before but I'd consider it if it would save me a couple hundred bucks. If so, then I'd need a PSU too.

I assume that onboard RAID will be ok for editing purposes for now, if so I'll hold off on a RAID card.

Any thoughts would be appreciated, thanks!

 

[Dangman]

Very high-end there. Please answer questions 3 to 10 in the sticky titled "ANSWER THESE QUESTIONS FIRST!" So that we can help you better.

 

[engiNURD]

Get as much RAM as you can afford, and setup a RAMDisk. A couple Intel/Indilinx SSDs in RAID0 for the OS wouldn't hurt, either.

 

[Sakaris]

Very high-end there. Please answer questions 3 to 10 in the sticky titled "ANSWER THESE QUESTIONS FIRST!" So that we can help you better.

I adjusted my first post accordingly.

I think the redundant power supply is nice but a bit overkill, though it comes with the case.

 

[Dangman]

Just bumping this so that I can remember to post here when I'm more lucid

 

[sirmonkey1985]

you may want to look into using a GTX 295 instead of the radeon 5850 just for the pure fact that a lot of video editing applications are moving toward cuda support.. and im not sure how many support ATI cards yet..

 

[Sakaris]

We'll most likely use Adobe premiere cs4, I didn't think about cuda, thx, I'll look into gtx 295's. I'm not sure how gpu's are utilized on that NLE, granted I've seen bundle deals for quadro cx cards and adobe cs4 products.

 

[sirmonkey1985]

dont bother with the quadro's.. more headache then benefit..

yeah a cuda supported card should help a lot in adobe premiere CS4..

 

[engiNURD]

I don't think a super high end card like the GTX285 will actually make a noticeable improvement over, lets say, a GTX260, for example, but the choice is yours. I haven't found any real data supporting my theory, but since you're the one investing such a huge budget, I'd suggest looking into it.

 

[Zepher]

I am just wondering how you plan on getting the uncompressed HD footage into the PC?

I have been a Matrox user for about 10 years or so and enjoy the benefits of a dedicated editing card.
www.matrox.com
www.canopus.com makes good cards and software as well.

 

[Sakaris]

I am just wondering how you plan on getting the uncompressed HD footage into the PC?

I have been a Matrox user for about 10 years or so and enjoy the benefits of a dedicated editing card.
www.matrox.com
www.canopus.com makes good cards and software as well.

I'm not sure. We'll most likely be using a sony XDCAM pmw-ex3 recording at 24psf 4:2:2 10-bit over HD-SDI. Whichever card will have to support genlock, and 24psf capture at 1920x1080. I haven't worked with a dedicated editing card before, and we've been looking at BMD decklink cards and canopus... I'm at a bit of a loss moving to HD here. Its all been giant stacks of white papers and advertising thus far. Do you know if canopus cards work well with non-canopus editing software?

 

[Sakaris]

I don't think a super high end card like the GTX285 will actually make a noticeable improvement over, lets say, a GTX260, for example, but the choice is yours. I haven't found any real data supporting my theory, but since you're the one investing such a huge budget, I'd suggest looking into it.

From what I can gather I shouldn't expect the GPU to speed up the encoding process, though I'm still not sure what tangible advantages I should expect. The 295 is certainly a beast, but at a hair short of $500 on superbiiz I think I likely will pass on it. Originally including a high end GPU with this potential build was as a toy rather than a tool (and a 5850 was $244 on superbiiz the day I first posted, now they're all 300 on backorder.... bastards.).

 

[Zepher]

I am not sure about the compatibility of software with the Canopus card but the Canopus Edius software is very very good. I attended a WEVA Expo a couple of years ago and won a copy of Edius Neo and was very impressed with how it worked for an inexpensive piece of software, it costs only $200, it just doesn't do uncompressed HD. The new Edius Neo 2 does Uncompressed HD but doesn't do native support for your camera format but the full Edius does.

The Matrox Axio can Genlock to your camera and has HD-SDI input and output.

If you decide to go Matrox, go here to see a validated system so you can choose the parts that are guaranteed to work with the hardware and software.

When we built our Matrox RT.X2 system, I just built the machine with the same components that were recommended at the time of the build.