Computer configuration for HD video editing

[Alsmol]

Hi everybody!

I have to produce several 2 hours long HD movies.
I have a budget of USD 6500 and configured the following computer at dell.com
Dell Precision T7500
Windows® 7 Professional
Processor Dual Quad Core Intel® Xeon® Processor E5620, 2.40GHz,12M L3, 5.86GT/s, turbo
Memory 24GB, DDR3 RDIMM Memory, 1333MHz, ECC (12 DIMMS)
Graphics Dual 1.0GB NVIDIA® Quadro® FX 3800, QUAD MON, 4DP & 2DVI
Boot Hard Drive 250GB SATA 3.0Gb/s with NCQ and 8MB DataBurst Cache™
Hard Drive Configuration C2 All SATA or SSD drives, Non-RAID, 2 drive total configuration
DVD and Read-Write Devices 16X DVD-ROM
2nd Hard Drive 1TB SATA 3.0Gb/s, 7200 RPM Hard Drive with 32MB DataBurst Cache™
Integrated LSI 1068e SAS/SATA 3.0Gb/s controller

Please advise if my configuration is optimal. Since it is a very big sum I am a bit nervous before placing the order

 

[ksampanna]

Which software do you usually use?
I recommend getting atleast one SSD, which will significantly speed up video load times.

 

[Alsmol]

Hi everybody!

I have to produce several 2 hours long HD movies.
I have a budget of USD 6500 and configured the following computer at dell.com
Dell Precision T7500
Windows® 7 Professional
Processor Dual Quad Core Intel® Xeon® Processor E5620, 2.40GHz,12M L3, 5.86GT/s, turbo
Memory 24GB, DDR3 RDIMM Memory, 1333MHz, ECC (12 DIMMS)
Graphics Dual 1.0GB NVIDIA® Quadro® FX 3800, QUAD MON, 4DP & 2DVI
Boot Hard Drive 250GB SATA 3.0Gb/s with NCQ and 8MB DataBurst Cache™
Hard Drive Configuration C2 All SATA or SSD drives, Non-RAID, 2 drive total configuration
DVD and Read-Write Devices 16X DVD-ROM
2nd Hard Drive 1TB SATA 3.0Gb/s, 7200 RPM Hard Drive with 32MB DataBurst Cache™
Integrated LSI 1068e SAS/SATA 3.0Gb/s controller

Please advise if my configuration is optimal. Since it is a very big sum I am a bit nervous before placing the order

Thank you!

 

[Emperus]

The quadro cards are not going to aid even one bit for any sort of video editing purpose.. You could do well with desktop video solutions unless of course, low power usage is the primary criteria over cost..

 

[COLGeek]

I recommend you use at least 2 monitors with your configuration. I would also recommend that you bump up the 1TB HDD to a 2TB HDD (if not 2 of them). HD video eats up huge amounts of disk space and you are likely going to have many hours of video to work with.

BTW, Emperus is right. The Quadro (while really cool) is complete overkill for your purposes. Get a highend desktop card instead and sink the $$$ in the additional disk space and SSD.

Have fun!

 

[ksampanna]

You don't need the twin fx 3800s for editing. Video editing is a CPU intensive process, with a card just providing bonus GPU acceleration. So you'd do just as well with a single one. With the $ saved, you could plan future upgrades.

 

[MarkG]

I recommend getting atleast one SSD, which will significantly speed up video load times.

You're not going to fit much HD video on an SSD unless it's already heavily compressed (e.g. HDV or H.264). And if it's that highly compressed you won't need an SSD; I've been editing HDV from an external USB drive at 480Mbps.

But if you're using low-compression HD from hard drives then you'll really need a RAID to have much chance of playing it back in real time (uncompressed 1080, for example, is around 200MB/second).