Im building a computer for a friend of mine who shoots alot of films and want a powerful machine to be able to edit the videos with. Alot of the format will be HD so its going to be dealing with some huge files sizes. Now i have built many computer before and gaming rigs but just not sure what the bulk of the workload goes onto for video editing and encoding. I was figuring to just use a c2d q6600 processor What sort of video card would be optimal for this? keep in mind he has NO intention of gaming on the machine at all. Also would it be worthwhile to invest in a 10000rpm raptor drive as the c drive? or would that not make much of a difference? Thanks alot
i believe that the video cards you need for editing is the ATi FireGL series or the nVidia Quadro series. they are ridiculously expensive, but they are designed for heavy use. be sure to get a quality psu to keep up with the system and card. as for the hdd, you'll need adequate cooling to keep it running strong. because the rig is designed for video editing, cooling is very important to the components. a 10k rpm raptor should work nicely with the system.
hmm yea i was looking into those firegl and quadro cards. I wonder how nessicary those would be or if a normal would suffice? Does anybody know much about these cards or know where i can find some more info on them. Becuase thats the main issue which i am unclear on at the moment I will definatly make sure the system is running cool since video editing will be running everything at 100% load usually.
Besically the same as above. The Fire GL series and Quadro series cards are the best in video editing. However, a 10,000 rpm HDD would be a waste of money since the biggest size they come in is 150GB. You could get 2 1TB HDDs from Samsung, put them in RAID 0 and have essentially a 2GB 15000rpm HDD.
so even a base model fire gl or quattro would be better then say a ati3870? I dont think i will be setting it up in raid, but would there be a big difference between a norm 7200rpm drive and the 10000rpm because if it is minimal then i wont even bother
Its a nice difference, I have 74GB Raptor where I store my OS and working folders for my video files while editing, rebuilding, etc. I use Nero 7 and have tried some Sony Vegas but not enough to be useful. I know Nero and my machine (Opteron 185 @2.8 and a 7600GT) stutters playing Sony HD video (AVCHD) through its editing program so I just bought an overclocked 8800GT for myself that I havent popped in yet. I mean I want to try and keep it HD and not transcode it to another file format and loose it! My equipment is good, but still 1 generation behind and has trouble in certain spots so I hope that answers your question.
