I'm trying to figure out how to speed up video editing on my oldish computer. Your input would be very much appreciated!
I mainly use my computer (see specifications below) for still image editing in Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop. For that type of work, performance is satisfactory.
Recently, however, I've also started editing video using CyberLink PowerDirector 13. Typically, my recordings consist of two 30 min 1920x1080p videos, plus one or two high quality stereo wav tracks. I don't need 3D transitions, advanced special effects etc. - most of the time all I want to do is switch back and forth between the video sources using the multicam plugin, apply basic colour and lighting corrections, and maybe do some cropping and panning (PowerTools > Video Crop) before exporting to a lower resolution format.
Unfortunately, even this seems to be beyond the capabilities of my current system. Simply selecting, moving and resizing clips on the timeline, or switching between tabs, often produces lags of several seconds. (I can't figure out why - there shouldn't be any heavy computations involved in those operations, should there?)
Preview rendering is also very slow at times (which makes it a pain to do colour adjustments), and video often freezes during playback. When it comes to producing the final output, speed is less of a concern - I just do something else while the computer finishes the work.
My question to you: what software/hardware tweaks or upgrades can I do to improve performance, short of building a whole new computer? For instance, would adding a dedicated video card (preferred price range: a few hundred dollars/euros) help with the above specific issues? With only the CPU's integrated graphics, hardware acceleration does not seem to be available - but I'm not sure how much of a difference that makes in my case.
If you do think I had better replace the entire computer (except the ssd:s, preferably, which are quite new), I'd be very grateful for suggestions based on my needs as detailed above.
Best regards,
Erik,
Sweden
-----
Current setup:
Motherboard:
Asus M5A78L-M/USB3 (SATA 3Gb/s)
CPU:
AMD FX-4170 BE 4-CORE 4.2GHZ 12MB
RAM:
16GB 1333MHZ DDR3 CL9
Drives:
Samsung 850 EVO 250GB SSD (system drive)
A-Data Premier Pro SP900 128GB SSD (Lightroom catalogue, Photoshop scratch disk)
OCZ Vertex 460A 240GB SSD (current projects)
PSU:
460 W
OS:
Windows 7 Professional 64 bit (recently reinstalled)
I mainly use my computer (see specifications below) for still image editing in Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop. For that type of work, performance is satisfactory.
Recently, however, I've also started editing video using CyberLink PowerDirector 13. Typically, my recordings consist of two 30 min 1920x1080p videos, plus one or two high quality stereo wav tracks. I don't need 3D transitions, advanced special effects etc. - most of the time all I want to do is switch back and forth between the video sources using the multicam plugin, apply basic colour and lighting corrections, and maybe do some cropping and panning (PowerTools > Video Crop) before exporting to a lower resolution format.
Unfortunately, even this seems to be beyond the capabilities of my current system. Simply selecting, moving and resizing clips on the timeline, or switching between tabs, often produces lags of several seconds. (I can't figure out why - there shouldn't be any heavy computations involved in those operations, should there?)
Preview rendering is also very slow at times (which makes it a pain to do colour adjustments), and video often freezes during playback. When it comes to producing the final output, speed is less of a concern - I just do something else while the computer finishes the work.
My question to you: what software/hardware tweaks or upgrades can I do to improve performance, short of building a whole new computer? For instance, would adding a dedicated video card (preferred price range: a few hundred dollars/euros) help with the above specific issues? With only the CPU's integrated graphics, hardware acceleration does not seem to be available - but I'm not sure how much of a difference that makes in my case.
If you do think I had better replace the entire computer (except the ssd:s, preferably, which are quite new), I'd be very grateful for suggestions based on my needs as detailed above.
Best regards,
Erik,
Sweden
-----
Current setup:
Motherboard:
Asus M5A78L-M/USB3 (SATA 3Gb/s)
CPU:
AMD FX-4170 BE 4-CORE 4.2GHZ 12MB
RAM:
16GB 1333MHZ DDR3 CL9
Drives:
Samsung 850 EVO 250GB SSD (system drive)
A-Data Premier Pro SP900 128GB SSD (Lightroom catalogue, Photoshop scratch disk)
OCZ Vertex 460A 240GB SSD (current projects)
PSU:
460 W
OS:
Windows 7 Professional 64 bit (recently reinstalled)
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram