Graphic Card for Video Editing

Video editing doesn't need a particularly powerful GPU as all the work is done by the CPU. Go for a mid-range card like the 7900/X1900 series that don't cost the earth and can handle most games.

I just built a PC for a friend back in December for editing with avid & video games

I read a bunch of stuff relating to getting avid up and running before hand and it all seemed to be super concerned about the video card.

I read that the 7900 series of cards seemed to work pretty well with the openGL stuff in Avid and the card I chose was a BFG 7950 GT(the single card not the SLI on a stick one). Probably shouldn't go with an 8800 or anything just yet as the drivers for those are still kinda screwy and from what I read Avid likes its drivers to function perfectly.

installed Avid and runs great so far, heres the system:

MSI 975x V.2
E6600
BFG 7950 GT
2gig DDR2 "Geil" Ram

also picked up a http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E1681...
for capture.

He seemed pretty amazed after I got it working so fast, he has horror stories about using avid on an Apple in film school.

-BW

if this computer is for video editing then your best net will be th x1900all in wonder

i dont know if you know what they are but basicly you get full vivo (composit in/out) and dual tuners (digital/analogue/radio) and 2 outputs for connecing it to a tv, svideo and scart

but for a video editing PC then you wont need a particuly powerful gfx card but the x1900 a/w is a good buy and will be able to handle all the modern games but it sounds like your not after a gaming rig so you might be better off getting yourself a x1800 xl a/w or maybe a x800 xl/gt
a friend of mine has the x1800 xl a/w and he has no propblems at all with it

The X1900 All-in-woinder is a waste for video editing. It's strength is the TV tuner, but you don't need a tuner for editing.

Basically, you need a sub-$100 Geforce 6600 or Radeon X1300. That's it. You don't need any more power than that for video editing.

If you're using a digital video camera you'll need a firewire input, and if you want to pull in from an analog source you'll need a video capture card which will also cost about $100.

I agree, but maybe considering the 'play a few video games' maybe an X1600 at very little increase in price?

The only other consideration I have is which AVID app is being used, some are geared towards ATi (Liquid) or nV (XpressHD), but I'd say unless he knows for sure which app h's looking at, then the suggestions of the GF6600/7300 or X1300/1600 should be fine and would be perfect.

Missed the 'few games' part.

heck, I'd recommend stepping up to the $120 X1650 XT or 7600 GT in that case.

Yeah it just depends on the money he wants to spend and the games he wants to play.

The X1600Pro for $70 is pretty cheap, I assume that was the X1650XT or GF7600GT for $120 right?

Either option fits the bill for 'a few games' just depends on the level he expects those games and the quality he's expecting.Although at $120 the X1900GT becomes appealing (which is faster than the X1950GT);
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E1681...

However if that wasn't a typo and that's an X1950XT for $120, I'd say damn, sure, whatever future GPGPU assitance might posibly be available too, might be worth ensuring a monster like that. But of course, slightly more noise, slightly more power consumption at idle, but a heck of alot more power.

Really just depends on the acceptable expectations, which is up to him to flesh out. I think we've given him some good starting points.

I think he also needs to consider his Avid angle too and mention which Avid app it is.

If it's Avid, save a lot of hassle and buy an nvidia card. Avid and ATI just don't get along.

Edit: Oh, unless you're talking about one of the ex-Pinnacle products (Edition, etc), which used to like ATI more than nvidia.

the best cards meant for video editing cost an arm and a leg. But most of them include there own editing software. Matrox or Canopus are the big two, just about all there cards include hardware encoding, with multiple inputs, run off PCI or AGP, few are on PCI-e. But they're pricey, but from my experience with Premiere Pro hardware encoding is really nice, granted my x1900 a/w can only do mepg hardware encoding, it does task the CPU heavy when use other encodes, settling for a 7600 gt might be best for you and spend a few extra to get a quad-core will help speed things along.

I don't know if this is relevant but here it is just in case.

NVIDIA Ships 128-Core Graphics Cards for High-End Film Editors, Graphics Pros: Apple 'Excited' LINK

What caught my attention was this:



Wouldn't this make the G80 a better choice for video editing?

For video editing, a better CPU and more memory are the important items. The HDDs are also important but you seem to have covered that already

nVidia doesn't make a 128 core GPU, if you read carefully you'll see the new Quadros are relatively equal to 128 1.35ghz CPUs. Really the new Quadro is a G80 with a different driver set to take advantage of the larger memory size and to optimize it for workstation centric apps.

For video editing a piece of dedicated hardware like Matrox, Canopus, Avid, Bluefish, etc... make are more ideal because they have hardware encoding, and hardware dedicated to render video seperate from the CPU provided your editing software can utilize the cards feature set. Now some new editing software out there requires you to have a 256mb GPU so you can add in 3D effects to your video.

I will go on the record and say I'm not a video editing professional, its just one of my favorite hobbies.

Thx crazypyro.  

Well, like I said AVID Liquid = ATi , Avid DNxHD/XpressHD = nV IMO.

However it's only Express HD that specifically locks out ATi (and non-Quadros are 'not supported', yet before that AVID favoured ATi, then with the recent shift there was an uproar, and this vendor specific support ruffled alot of feathers. I still haven't heard of a technical reason as to why HD overlay favours the G70 cards, but you can bypass it by going into Legacy Overlay Mode, kinda sucks but makes it more useable.

The thing is that the quadro/nv advantage is simply about the OGL performance of nV over ATi whereas in things like Liquid, Matrox and similar plug-in prefered solutions they are geared towards A or B, so that HD would prefer nV is weird, ATi should simply perform worse, not be shut out and forced to Legacy Overlay mode. I've always suspected TWIMTBP type involvement there, but AVID hasn't offered much insight to this restriction to Quadro (yeah why not GFs?).



Yes but at what price that's the question. Is it worth 2.5X the price yet?
Using the stream processors as co-processors has alot of potential but very little practical implementation at this time for video editing/effects.