Building cheap system for movie editing?

TimTim Southwest PA Icrontian
edited October 2005 in Hardware
I have occassion to build a computer to be used for general internet use and some digital video editing. But due to budget limits, it has to be kept fairly cheap.

I know the best setup would be something like an Athlon 64 and a high end 256 MB graphics card, but that can't be done here.

I'm thinking of a processor (I have 2 AMD Socket 462/A motherboards here right now) in the 1.5 to 2 Ghz range, and the best 4X/8X AGP video card I can find under $100.

I've used Windows Movie Maker 2 in the past, mostly because it's free. But even with a 2.2 Ghz Barton and a 128 MB ATI / Radeon 9200SE video card, The video playback in MM2 isn't that great. Once the file is encoded into Windows Media Player it runs much smoother and better.

So I'd like to see what people think. Which would be more important to a good editing system - the processor or graphics card? I'd have at least 512 MB memory in it no matter what.

Comments

  • profdlpprofdlp The Holy City Of Westlake, Ohio
    edited October 2005
    The processor is what does the encoding, the video card just helps the finished project look good on that particular computer. Since we're talking 2-D here, just about any modern video card is going to be satisfactory, at least until you start talking about $1,000 professional cards. The big bucks people spend on video cards are for the 3-D graphics processor.

    Get the fastest CPU and most RAM your budget will allow; skimp on the video card to do so.
  • Sledgehammer70Sledgehammer70 California Icrontian
    edited October 2005
    I agree with Profdlp, more the ram the better, even of you go something like dual channel if the mobo supports it. like 2 x 256 chips in a low latency, or 2 x 512 chips. You can pick some up for about 55 - 88 bucks. I think I might even have some ram that might work for you :)

    Get the best proc for your mobo and get some good Ram! GC isn't the most important thing. it is the end product that counts :)
  • muddocktormuddocktor
    edited October 2005
    Definitely go with the faster processor and lot's of ram. Like has been said before, the vid card isn't involved in the actual encoding. I would suggest that you sell those 2 AXP mobos and buy a socket 754 clawhammer with the DFI NF3 250Gb mobo and a 1 gig stick of low latency ddr such as this G. Skill stick . Since there's not too much future life to socket 939 anyways, building a socket 754 system isn't much of a drawback except for the fact that it can't run a dual core proc. EPoX has even come out with a PCI-e socket 754 board if you want to go with a PCI-e vid card. The EPoX board is called the EP-8NPA7I and uses the nforce4 chipset.
  • TimTim Southwest PA Icrontian
    edited October 2005
    I did some testing today. I put in the high bit rate file of my episode #6 (that CD was on top of the stack of backup CDs for my webshow, and I just happened to pick #6 off the CD) and re-encoded it from 2055 Kbits down to 1800 Kbits, which was a 49 MB video file. I also did various editing functions to see how good the picture quality was and how much lag and delay it had when previewing pieces of the video.

    3 computers were used:

    1. Main system, NF-7 Version 2, 2500+ Barton at 2.2 Ghz (11 X 200), 768 MB RAM, 128 MB 9200 SE ATI / Radeon video card.

    2. Abit ST6 motherboard, P3 1 Ghz CPU, 320 MB SDRAM, cheap 32 MB video card.

    3. Dell Latitude CPi-A 366 Mhz Pentium 2 laptop, 256 MB SDRAM, 2.5 MB on board video.

    All 3 were using Windows XP Home and Windows Movie Maker 2.

    Computer #1 encoded the file in 4-1/4 minutes. Good.

    Computer #2 encoded the file in 9-3/4 minutes. Acceptable, it doesn't have to be super-fast. I just need to be able to easily move and edit pieces of the video while using MM2. And it did that as good as my main system.

    Computer #3 (laptop) took 23-1/4 minutes to encode it, with the cooling fan screaming away the whole time. And editing video quality was absolutely horrible. It couldn't even PLAY the video in MM2 without constant skipping and breaking up and things like that.

    I guess Microsoft was serious about needing at least a 600 Mhz processor to use Movie Maker 2.

    When I compared the processor speeds to the amount of time required to encode the files, it was more or less proportional. Some variance, but generally in line with speed = output.
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