[New Build] $2-3k Video Editing Rig for Adobe CS5

Obscura85

Distinguished
Oct 5, 2011
2
0
18,510
Hey guys,
I want to build a video editing rig in the next few weeks. It needs to have Firewire 800, dual display capabilities and a Geforce or Quadro graphics card to work with Premier CS5 for GPU acceleration.

Can anyone recommend a build for this? What is the most I can get for $2-3k for the computer itself?

Thanks!
 

joe_newbuilder

Distinguished
Sep 12, 2011
104
0
18,690
Video editing required very good disk i/o.

Your budget is also significantly challenged if you use a Quadro card. It looks like Nvida went all out with the Quadro support. There are software hacks that you can use, but I recommend going with an actual Quadro card as opposed to hacked GeForce drivers.

At your budget that may not be possible. You may get better bang for the buck going with a geforce card and buffing up the CPU, disk array.

This site has some information on using CS5.5. [http://www.studio1productions.com/Articles/PremiereCS5.htm]


Are you going to work on features, Television, music videos or commercials? Will you be working on 3d material or 4 material at all? Will you need to output HD:SDI?

I also recommend skipping consumer level hardware and going to server/enterprise equipment. The bandwidth between components is usually better. For video production, loading frames is one of the load aspects of image processing.


 

Obscura85

Distinguished
Oct 5, 2011
2
0
18,510
I will be editing feature documentary footage and music videos shot in AVCHD with an AG-AF100.

Eventualy I want to output HD:SDI but I dont think I need that at the moment.

What server/enterprise hardware would you recommend?
 

joe_newbuilder

Distinguished
Sep 12, 2011
104
0
18,690
Where I am we use HPZ600 and z800 machines. Both are outside your budget but are solid machines.

Any particular reason you are using the adobe CS suite? Will you also be editing? Curious why you aren't using a mac based solution.

Everything I have seen has been nvidia/Intel based on this end. It could be because of the linux support we have previously established with that combination.

Hopefully someone else can chime in.

I'll do a little research. I don't keep up on enterprise hardware since I typically let 'those guys' decide what is best.

I know you should spend a good bit of coin on a raid as well as back-up media. If you have to go the SATA route you will need to over spec your processor since SATA consumes CPU cycles. Then again a good controller card may absorb most of the overhead.

It sounds like a smaller project. Will you be editing color? does your budget include a display and calibration tool?


 

joe_newbuilder

Distinguished
Sep 12, 2011
104
0
18,690
It seems the main differences between the enterprise and consumer rigs are the chipset, ability to add ram, and multi-processor support. If you are only getting a single processor and can squeeze enough ram on it you can go with a consumer board.

Video and graphics operations highly benefit from parallelism. The more threads you can run the better. Reading up on it it looks like Premier pro has multi processor support but not all third party plug-ins do.For hardware go for more cores and threads over raw speed.

Adobe list 2 gforce cards that support GPU acceleration so you may be in luck(gtx285,gtx470) both of these cards are significantly cheaper than the Quadro versions. It looks like the GPU is heavily used in processing some effects for real-time playback.

You'll need to do a bit of research on your own. Try going to each subsystem forum and asking about what you find.