Video Editing Cards

[doomturkey]

I don't do video editing but my dad does and he was going to upgrade a few parts. I dont know too much about what cards are good for video editing, but my dad runs pinnacle liquid edition and does quite a bit of video work. He has a P4 3.0E system that runs a Radeon 8500, so it's AGP.

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

The Radeon 8500 should be fine for jst about anything.

You won't see much difference in 2D performance or quality between that card and any of the others out today. Unlike 2D, if you have a solid card like the R8500 which has quality RAMDACs and TMDS, you're pretty much set.

Is there anything he's thinking he needs to improve or something that's wrong?

Otherwise, that's a solid card, I had the AIW version.

 

[doomturkey]

My dad just wanted to do a little upgrading since he now gets money for some of the video work that he does. I have already told him to get an A64 x2 sometime in the near future, but lets leave CPUs out of this post. Anyways he also wants dual DVI on a card so that's another reason he wants to get a new card. And, btw, he wants 2 19" LCD monitors that perform pretty well, for less than about $700 for both. Any suggestions on that?

EDIT: He wants to spend around $200 on a card. I have been thinking something like an X1600 would be good.

 

[pip_seeker]

you name the topic Video Editing Cards...

but you go on to talk about video display cards?

So I am a little confused what you want to know about.

Video editing is typically heavy 2D work. Matrox is a proven leader in Multiple display video cards. I would look to them for a video display card if the system will be used primarily for video editing. They have a new TripleHead2Go and DualHead2Go that look pretty good as well as many other options.

Video Editing Hardware cards come in all cost ranges, Matrox has a few, but their lowend cards have been out awhile. There should be some new hardware cards by Matrox probably around NAB.

If your dad is still using DV, then he might be better sticking with an all software editing suite such as Liquid Edition by pinnacle/avid.

Adobe has released Premiere Pro2 with the addition for multiple camera editing. If your dad is heavily into adding effects, whether it be sound effects or graphics it might be better for him to upgrade to a hardware accelerated option. Edius by Canopus is another software only solution or you can purchase their hardware for acceleration.

Just realize you get what you pay for, and don't by based on what a product could do, buy it because it does what you need it to do today.

To many times things are promised by any number of companies that never get fulfilled. Also if you do plan to use a Hardware accelerated card make sure that this card will work with your current system, there are motherboards that aren't compatible with hardware accelerated Video editing cards.

Your dad needs to determine what his needs are... whether it's DV... HD- HDV,HD1080i,HD720p and so on or a combination of all the formats available today.

A software solution maybe all he needs now, the more heavily you get into effects /multiple streams/layers is when a hardware solution would be most beneficial. NAB is not too far off and there should be some new products mentioned then. Another good place to readup on video related tidbits is VideoMaker magazine for average joe or DV magazine for the higher end gear.

good luck, do plenty of research and make sure the product you decide on does what you need it to do... and remember you get what you pay for pretty much with any of these products, so shop wisely.

 

[doomturkey]

you name the topic Video Editing Cards...

but you go on to talk about video display cards?

Ok, sorry about that but i guess what i mean is what would be the best display card for running what he runs (pinnacle liquid ed.) with dual DVI for 2 monitors. No HD or anything, just DV. All I really need to know is what would be a better card for running Pinnacle for around $200. Again, he is making money off of his videos, so thats why he wants to upgrade. Would AIW series be a good fit for what he does?

 

[Ratbait]

And dont forget a lot of storage, video can choke a system in no time.

Sony Vegas is an excellent program and its as easy as Adobe Premiere.

 

[pip_seeker]

Not sure if Pinnacle Liq Edition uses the Gpu off the video card for any effects acceleration or not so the answer should really depend on that.

Your best bet would be to go to the pinnacle board and ask the questions there. Sometimes these software only programs will support certain video cards GPU's for Effect acceleration... if you use another card that isn't supported then it will have to render the sequence rather than produce real time playback.

Personally, being that he's already got a more middle end software program it's unlikely you would need or use the AIW unless you need an analog video in /out for some reason, I'd say skip the AIW. Plus any software that comes with the AIW could conflict with the Liquid Edition software. It's usually not a good idea to mix multiple editing apps on the same machine.

If effect acceleration is a non issue I would go this route.....

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814106154&CMP=OTC-pr1c3watch&ATT=14-106-154

Just realize this card is more suited for video/ business apps etc. Not that you couldn't play games with it, the performance wouldn't be as good as a card designed to play games.

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

EDIT: He wants to spend around $200 on a card. I have been thinking something like an X1600 would be good.

The X1600 would be perfect IMO, the X1300 could do about the same for less. The only advantage of the X1600 is a little more oomph for hardware accelerated apps. I remember reading somehwhere just a few days ago a quote from ATi's reps saying the X1300 might have slightly higher resource useage than the X1600 and X1800 for AVIVO features.

Seriously, RAM, CPU, and HD size and speed are most important for 2D editing.

 

[doomturkey]

Yeah, I understand that hdd, cpu, and RAM are teh most important when it somes to editing. I already knew gpu doesnt affect much, all my dad really wants is a card with dual dvi for 2 monitors that has decent performance in the 2d and 3d. I'm leaning towards a 6600 because its the only agp card that really seems to be right. I would go for X1600 or 1300 if they were in agp and had dual dvi, but this should do perfectly right here:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814150096

 

[rsmart]

Liquid Edition certainly does use the GPU for some effects, such as realtime rendering of picture-in-picture and all of the "GPU Effects" (Transitions). Faster cards allow more/quicker timeline response when realtime rendering is required.

OpenGL accelerated cards do help, but at a price. Any modern upper-mid range card would be suitable if the cost of a Quattro (minimum Quattro 540) is not justified. I use an X850. 256MByte is required for HD editing so that's why the OpenGL cards are avoided - check out the price of a Quattro 1300/1400 with that much memory!

Traditionally ATI is preferred over nVidia for LE, but I think that that is more a historic thing as Pinnacle and ATI have co'operated in the past (The 8500 card that came with LE at one point is an example). Check out the Pinnacle and Avid forums for more support on these cards.

http://webboard.pinnaclesys.com/read_forums.asp?WebboardID=14&lng=1
http://www.avid.com/exchange/forums/

I'm not sure whether the 6600/X1300 would be that much of an upgrade over the 8500, maybe there is someone out there with 1st hand experience. A 6600GT would be much better, but most of those cards only come with 128MByte.

Maybe a motherboard upgrade to PCIe woulbe be in order, but that may take too much out of the budget. I'm sure that there some X1600 AGP cards released recently.

 

[pip_seeker]

If you don't get any acceleration with that card it wouldn't be worth it...

Look at the features list of the Matrox compared to Nvidia....

Matrox Features

DualHead up to 1920 x 1440 per display
Dual-DVI up to 1920 x 1200 per display**
Single-display plus TV output support
Advanced multi-display output modes:
- Dual-display plus TV output
- TripleHead Desktop Mode
Composite and S-video output (PAL and NTSC)
PureVideo Preview - for full screen video playback
Dual Hardware Overlay - gamma correctable
Glyph Antialiasing - for crisp text rendering
Adjustable proc-amp settings - for TV and overlay video window: hue, saturation, brightness and contrast
UltraSharp Display Output technology
Matrox DualHead Clone - to view a copy of one display on the other display
Matrox Multi-Display Zoom - to view a portion of one display full-screen on the other display
Easy to use PowerDesk-HF utility suite
OpenGL® and Microsoft® DirectX® compliant
Display drivers for Microsoft Windows® XP and Windows® 2000

and now Nvidia

NVIDIA® CineFX™ 3.0 Technology
NVIDIA® UltraShadow™ II Technology
Integrated TV Encoder
64-Bit Texture Filtering and Blending
Adaptable Programmable Video Processor
Unified Driver Architecture (UDA)
Vibrant Color Temperature Correction
Advanced Spatial Temporal De-interlacing

This choice becomes a bit harder if one card accelerates effects, if that isn't a biggie the Matrox card wins hands down.

You could edit video with TV out and see what the footage will look like before you print to tape or burn to DVD.

The dual display + TV out is very important for video editing.