Hi all,

The problem with not constantly upgrading one's PC is that eventually it catches up with you....like now. I recently bought a Sony DRU-510A along with a 180gig drive. The BIOS does not recognise the drive size and only sees 131 of the 180gig. The second issue is that when attempting to encode a DVD it takes forever (12 hours for 54min movie). Rendering also has become tedious. When checking the performance of the processor it is maxed out all the time whilst the Ram runs at about 60%.

Going through all this begs the question, is it time to upgrade. Most will probably say yes without hesitation. The problem is that my PC is more than adequate for most my needs (work related large spreadsheets and .doc files). I will probably produce a max of three 1 hour video's a year.

Today I looked at a couple of options but can't help feeling that these may well be an overkill for my requirements both in terms of power and price. Having said which one needs to balance this with the fact that unless one buys at the leading edge it merely brings closer the time to next upgrade.

The other problem is that I do not remain technically up to date on all the new software / hardware / options and gizmo's.

I am curious what you guys, who do this more professionally and frequently than I would do in this situation.

Current System
ASUS P3V4X, 733MHz processor and 512M Ram
20Gig, and 2X40Gig WD Drives (with a new Deskstar 180gig)
Samsung CD Writer
Sony DRU-510A DVD Writer
Altec Lansing Speaker System
Soundblaster Live Player
DVRaptor
G4 Ti 4200 64Meg Video Card
ISDN Internal Modum
Ethernet Card
300W ATX Case

Windows 2000 Professional
Office 2000
DvRaptor
Premiere 6.0 (trying out the LSX-MPEG encoder plugin)
MyDVD
WinDVD (trial version, testing out the options)

I was looking at the ASUS P4T533 with a 3Gig processor and 1 Gig of Ram but this all sounds a little too much. What would be reasonable?

Can I keep my SB or should I use the onboard sound chip with its's Dolby 5.1?

Do I keep my DVRaptor or do I buy a cheaper capture card and go the software route?

The questions don't stop....


Thanks for the help.
Cheers
Andrew

PS: I never play PC games.

Most drives over 137GB come with an ATA controller card which can see more than 137GB. Some motherboards will have a BIOS update to let them see more than 137GB.

Encoding with good quality usually takes a long time. Some encoders are faster/higher quality than others. I suggest trying TMPGENC to see if it is better. It can be set to encode with constant bit rate, which is fast and good enough quality if your video is small (like 1 hour or less). There's a demo for it so try it out.

Upgrading your computer seems like overkill for you considering you only do a few videos a year.

<<<-- Originally posted by Andrew Leigh : Hi all,

The problem with not constantly upgrading one's PC is that eventually it catches up with you....like now. I recently bought a Sony DRU-510A along with a 180gig drive. The BIOS does not recognise the drive size and only sees 131 of the 180gig.
-----------------------
A $40 drive controller card will take care of that little problem if Asus doesn't have a new driver that will upgrade your motherboard.
------------------------

The second issue is that when attempting to encode a DVD it takes forever (12 hours for 54min movie). Rendering also has become tedious. When checking the performance of the processor it is maxed out all the time whilst the Ram runs at about 60%.

I use ProCoderLE that came with Edius. It will do a one-hour movie in about 4 hours on max quality. This on either a P4 1.5 gig system or a dual PIII-850 system. Let it work overnight.

Going through all this begs the question, is it time to upgrade. Most will probably say yes without hesitation. The problem is that my PC is more than adequate for most my needs (work related large spreadsheets and .doc files). I will probably produce a max of three 1 hour video's a year.
----------------------
Don't change just for that.
-----------------------
Today I looked at a couple of options but can't help feeling that these may well be an overkill for my requirements both in terms of power and price. Having said which one needs to balance this with the fact that unless one buys at the leading edge it merely brings closer the time to next upgrade.
------------------------
I never buy on the leading edge for editing systems. Too many problems and way too high a cost.
----------------------------

The other problem is that I do not remain technically up to date on all the new software / hardware / options and gizmo's.

I am curious what you guys, who do this more professionally and frequently than I would do in this situation.

Current System
ASUS P3V4X, 733MHz processor and 512M Ram
20Gig, and 2X40Gig WD Drives (with a new Deskstar 180gig)
Samsung CD Writer
Sony DRU-510A DVD Writer
Altec Lansing Speaker System
Soundblaster Live Player
DVRaptor
G4 Ti 4200 64Meg Video Card
ISDN Internal Modum
Ethernet Card
300W ATX Case

Windows 2000 Professional
Office 2000
DvRaptor
Premiere 6.0 (trying out the LSX-MPEG encoder plugin)
MyDVD
WinDVD (trial version, testing out the options)

I was looking at the ASUS P4T533 with a 3Gig processor and 1 Gig of Ram but this all sounds a little too much. What would be reasonable?
----------------------------
I'd not buy the 3 gig proc. The 2.4 gig is so much more reasonable. 1 gig of ram is a wee bit of overkill but it is what I run since I run 2-3 programs at a time when editing.
--------------------------
Can I keep my SB or should I use the onboard sound chip with its's Dolby 5.1?
-----------------------------
You have to have 6 speakers to run 5.1 so that's an additional cost. 5.1 won't let you edit sound any better. In fact it will be worse. The SB is a bit noisy but if it works, why change.
--------------------------
Do I keep my DVRaptor or do I buy a cheaper capture card and go the software route?
-----------------------
Why dump the Raptor? It works, RaptorEdit is fast and the codec is very clean. You can use Premiere for pretty if you need to.

I'd just gently lift up the existing motherboard and slide in the mobo, processor and memory, leaving everything else the same. The OS will not know you've changed anything from an installed software point of view so you don't need to do anything to be back up and running from that standpoint.

This is exactly what I'm doing to my main editing computer right now. Asus P4G800E-Deluxe, P4 2.4 gig, 1 gig of matched memory and it's all going to slide into my large server cabinet with its 11 drives, DVRexRT, Radion 9600 pro (had to be new because my old xPlode card won't work on the new mobo). After everything is operating under the existing Win2000Pro OS, I'll upgrade the OS to XPPro because the Canopus Edius software isn't supported except under XP.
-------------------------------

Now for another thought.
With the money you are spending, a little bit more would get you a dedicated editing computer that wouldn't be dragged down by all the other stuff one normally places on a single computer.

You could keep it off the Internet and free from any possible virus problems with just a little bit of care.

One small drive for your system drive would cost about $50, a new chassis can be had for under $50 and a $30 display card would work very well. You will probably need a new display card for your new mobo anyway as the newer AGP slots won't support the AGP 1 cards. Check before you buy.

Dont feel bad---I just encoded a one hour DVD in black and white--20 hour render using the Mainconcept Codec out of Vegas-Unless you purchase some hardware add on that will encode to MPEG2, then expect long encodes---The faster you computer the faster your encodes--but they will still take time.

Hi guys,

This is the kind of advice I have come to expect from this forum.

Think I will upgrade but on a much reduced scale as advised. I encoded last night whilst asleep and burnt the DVD early this am. Took about 1.5 hours to burn.

The main reason for the upgrade would be to enable me to do other work while encoding or writing to DVD. At present when encoding or writing I am unable to do a thing as the machine just sucks up all the resources and freezes until the task is complete.

Thank you very much for the advice.

Cheers
Andrew

PS: Is it advisable to work when writing or encoding.

Working while encoding - yes.

Working while writing to DVD - definite no-no.

Regards,

Julian

What about a processor upgrade? Check out this link:

http://www.powerleap.com/Products/iP3T.htm

I've been thinking about upgrading my machines, since the fastest PC I've got is a Duron 900. I do lots of wedding/special event type stuff on the side, and the slow encoding times are a killer. For most projects, I encode right out of Premiere to MPEG-2; it takes about 2-3 minutes for every minute of video (unless special effects arte involved, then it take a lot longer). Sometimes I'll output a working file so I can import into AE, or apply some other special effects, then encode in TMPGEnc. I get very good results this way, but encoding times TMPGEnc are horrible. I've got several PC's that I've set up as a render farm for AE, and that helps some, but I need to upgrade. Anyway, hope this helps.

Cheers,
Mark

2-3 minutes per minute of AVI isn't bad performance for conversion to mpeg2. I spend about 4 min per min for best quality, single pass using ProCoderLE. Incredibly clean DVD output. I just did a 1.5 hour encoding at best quality and it took a little over 7 hours. At night when I was NOT there.

I expect my new 2.4 gig HT processor with the very fast FSB to at least halve the times.

Not certain if there is anyway to substantially increase speeds except go to hardware encoding. For a Canopus system, that is either $800 for the DVRexRT or what, $1200 for a Storm system with the built-on hardware encoder.

Guess I'll let the systems think overnight for a while longer.

Burning takes me 15 minutes per hour of video. Not too bad.

Right now, I cant afford to go the hardware route. I recently bought a new GL2, so all the money I make on videos goes right into paying that off. From what I've read, software encodes can give superior results to hardware, because it can spend more time do motion searches. When I encode with Premiere, I usually use the DVD preset HIGH (when I can get away with it because of size) and it gives good results. When I really want outstanding quality, I use TMPGEnc and set Motion Search Precision to 10 bits and give it a very high bitrate ~8mb/sec. Takes forever, but really really good quality. I just finished a 54 minute wedding DVD, took about 19 hours to encode. This particular wedding I ran through AE because the bride wanted it to look like it was shot on film. What the heck, that's another $200 please! Ya gotta love Cinelook. Anyway, I had to output the resulting file as Hufyuv avi, and I processed it with TMPGenc. The result looks really good, but OMG the total processing took 4 days! When I finish paying off this cam, It's time for a hardware upgrade, I think.

Cheers,
Mark

Hello Mike,

what motherboard are you going to fit your 2,4 processor to?

Cheers
Andrew

Asus P4C800-E Deluxe. About $185 at the local discount store. Nice board. 800 Mhz FSB, on-board Intel gigabit LAN, 6.1 Audio (although I won't use it) Hardware RAID on Serial ATA & 133 Mhz EIDE or a separate set of non-RAID ports. 2X Firewire, 6X USB 2.0. Supposedly ready for the next generation of Intel processors.

Reportedly the fastest single P4 card available right now.


Hopefully tonight.

Thanks for the info Mike,


a shopping we will go...a shopping we will go la la la la.....


Cheers
Andrew

Okay I'm going to break out the price list from newegg.com (not promoting, but they seriously do have the best prices around):



Entry level system:

Motherboard - ASUS Motherboard P4P800 Deluxe -
http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProduct.asp?description=13-131-450&depa=1
Price: $133.00
Newegg.com Part # N82E16813131450

Processor - Intel Pentium 4 / 2.4CGHz
512k cache HT Technology 800 MHz FSB
http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProduct.asp?description=19-116-157&depa=1
Price: $171.00
Newegg.com Part # N82E16819116157

Memory: - 512mb of CORSAIR MEMORY XMS Extreme Memory Speed Series
512MB PC-3200C2 With Heat Spreader
http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProduct.asp?description=20-145-416&depa=1
Price $ 123.50
Newegg.com Part # N82E16820145416

Total: $ 427.50 + shipping + tax (only CA)

This is for someone on a budget, the price can still go down. Cut the dual channel memory (helps with rendering a lot) and maybe not pick the 800mhz fsb on the processor, but i wouldn't recommend it if your going to upgrade your system. Get something thats worth the money, don't cut corners.



Middle level system:

Motherboard - ASUS Motherboard P4C800 DELUXE Retail -
800Mhz FSB
Price: $178.99
Newegg.com Part # N82E16813131449

Processor - Intel Pentium 4 / 2.8CGHz 512k socket 478 Hyper Threading Technology 800 MHz FSB - RETAIL
http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProduct.asp?description=19-116-161&depa=1
Price: $265.00
Newegg.com Part # N82E16819116161

Memory - 1 GB of CORSAIR MEMORY XMS Extreme Memory Speed Series
(Twin Pack) 1GB Dual Channel (2 x 512MB)
http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProduct.asp?description=20-145-449&depa=1
Price: $245.00
Newegg.com Part # N82E16820145449

Total: $688.99

This system would be for a new computer, not a small upgrade. This could last someone a good couple years. The motherboard is equipped with a gigabit network card (operates at 1000 gigabites per sec) which is extremely helpful when transfering video or rendered clips. 1 GB of memory is really nice, rendering time is less and you can still operate the computer.



High end level system:

Motherboard - ASUS Motherboard P4C800-E DELUXE Retail
http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProduct.asp?description=13-131-464&depa=1
Price: $ 191.99
Newegg.com Part # N82E16813131464

Processor - Intel Pentium 4 3.2GHz 512k 800MHz FSB HT Technology
Price: $ 619.00
Newegg.com Part # N82E16819116164

Memory - 3 GB of CORSAIR MEMORY XMS Extreme Memory Speed Series
Low Latency (Twin Pack) 1GB Dual Channel ( 2 x 512mb )
http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProduct.asp?description=20-145-435&depa=1
Price: $ 293.50 x 3
Newegg.com Part # N82E16820145435

Total: $ 1691.49

This is for the professional with deeeeeeeep pockets. This system is basically, a dream. 3 GB of dual channel memory, the 875P chipset from intel, 3.2 HT processor, and a gigabit network. This is top notch, I am the best, money is no problem type system. Have fun with this baby.



This is just to give people a little more detail on the computer market now. You can go from dirt cheap to highly expensive. These systems I've quoted all run with Intel Pentium 4's due to the heat issue with AMD XP processors. Pentium 4's just run cooler so therefore less wear and tear on the processor itself. AMD is cheaper, but Intel is always trust worthy. I always boils down to how much money you have and what you want the computer to do for you.


-Kay

Here's a guide for swapping your motherboard out without a re-install.

http://arstechnica.infopop.net/OpenTopic/page?a=tpc&s=50009562&f=77909774&m=1400925745


2- You need pairs of RAM to take advantage of DDR memory. You can get something like
KINGSTON HyperX Series 184-pin 512MB Kit (2x 256MB) DDR333 (PC2700) DDR RAM modules, Model# KHX2700K2/512
$116.00
http://secure.newegg.com/app/CustratingReview.asp?item=20-144-104 has some short reviews of it. It should be compatible with your motherboard.

If you may want to overclock then you could get some better RAM. Kingston usually has the best value in RAM. If you want extreme overclocking then you will have to go with more expensive brands like OCZ. Look for the high PCXXXX numbers and the more expensive types from each manufacturer (i.e. for kingston it's hyperX versus normal).

I wouldn't touch any of the motherboards that have the 3COM LAN. It is a real resource sucker.

That's why they brought out the P4C800-E Deluxe. Has a better Intel chipset and the Intel LAN.

For the small difference, I'd leave the others on the shelf. Note that Asus has a qualified list of memory modules by model number. Many are matched sets which I think are somewhat important on these faster motherboards.

Thanks to you all once again.

Cheers
Andrew

Hi all,

just an update on the drive size limitations.

Recieved my ATA board yesterday, but it was the Promise ATA 100 board which also does not support drives over 131Gig, I should have got the ATA 133 version.

Anyways, last night I went browsing the Seagate site and found their software patch for the problem. I installed the patch and tried to format in W2000P. Right at the end it kicked me out with a message "Drive to large". I installed SP4 for W2000P and tried again with the same message.

I then formatted using Partition Magic which worked. I am now able to see the entire drive and am able to access it without any problems.

This has been an interesting process and I have learnt through it. Like for instance that my mobo bus speed is currently 100MHz, that the drives are running at ATA66 or DMA mode 4. My Ram is @ 133Mhz. Now i'm starting to really drool because if the theory is correct then,

ASUS P4C800-E Deluxe (bus speed 8X faster)
PIV 2,8Gig (4X faster)
All my drives will now increase in speed by 50% ( from ATA 66 to ATA100 as they are all ATA100 compliant)
Not to mention the increase in Ram speed.

The most unfortunate part of this is that I am unable to source the board locally and will have to get it elsewhere, the same will also probably apply the the matched pairs of Ram.

So much for not spending lot's of money.......

Glen that was a great link....the swopping mobo's one.

By the way I am confused. If the P4C800-E Deluxe has onboard RAID does this mean that I am able to have 4 drives plus an additional 4 IDE devices or do the same rules apply for my current board....a max of 4 IDE devices in total?

Thanks all
Cheers
Andrew

Andrew, have a look at the motherboard section of tomshardware.com:

You can read this very extensive review on the current trend of motherboards.
www.tomshardware.com/motherboard/20030707/index.html

I think if you can spot the top MSI or Gigabyte boards you will be fine.

I'm also having problem to find decent price for a matched pair of memory here in Japan. I wonder is it big problem if you lets say just buy two 512MB modules. What are the possible negatives?

Hi Bogdan,

can't answer on the memory side of things.

Went to tomshardware.com and took a look at the showdown of 24 boards with the intel 865/875P chipsets. I noticed that the fastest board for encoding from DV to MPEG-2 was the MSI 865 PE Neo2, it was also the fastest board for encoding MP3's.

Why this is of particular interest is you will remember that I mentioned the difficulties of obtaining the top ASUS boards here in S.A. Well my old business partner and friend happens to be the Technical Director of the business that locally distributes MSI product. This would mean a good price and the necessary backup, could be a great solution for me.


Anyone know of these boards with a DVRaptor???

Mike Rehmus any thoughts?

Cheers
Andrew

Recieved my ATA board yesterday, but it was the Promise ATA 100 board which also does not support drives over 131Gig, I should have got the ATA 133 version.


A lot of or all drives larger than 137GB come with an ATA adapter card (fits in PCI slot) to allow your computer to see more than 137GB.

I'm also having problem to find decent price for a matched pair of memory here in Japan. I wonder is it big problem if you lets say just buy two 512MB modules. What are the possible negatives?
When running a pair instead of a single stick of RAM the maximum RAM speed goes down a bit, on average by around 8mhz (this is from an ?OCZ? RAM FAQ and I forget the URL). If you buy sticks of RAM that barely meet specs (200mhz by itself) then pairing them up will mean they will not work at all or your system will be unstable. Matched pairs are guaranteed to work as a pair (otherwise the manufacturer is sleazy and your RAM is defective). Most RAM has headroom (maybe 30mhz?) so matched sticks of RAM will not be an issue. It should not be an issue at all if you buy quality RAM.

Went to tomshardware.com and took a look at the showdown of 24 boards with the intel 865/875P chipsets. I noticed that the fastest board for encoding from DV to MPEG-2 was the MSI 865 PE Neo2, it was also the fastest board for encoding MP3's.
The MSI Neo2 is the fastest because it "cheats". It dynamically overclocks when your CPU is stressed. If you don't plan on overclocking this is ok.

This has been an interesting process and I have learnt through it. Like for instance that my mobo bus speed is currently 100MHz, that the drives are running at ATA66 or DMA mode 4. My Ram is @ 133Mhz. Now i'm starting to really drool because if the theory is correct then,

ASUS P4C800-E Deluxe (bus speed 8X faster)
PIV 2,8Gig (4X faster)
All my drives will now increase in speed by 50% ( from ATA 66 to ATA100 as they are all ATA100 compliant)
Not to mention the increase in Ram speed.

You mobo will run at a variety of speeds. For the Pentium2.4c your mobo should be running at 200mhz (that's the front side bus speed). Marketing people multiply the FSB by 4 because it makes larger numbers. Your processor speed is a fixed multiplier of the FSB speed. If you increase it your processor will go faster (it becomes overclocked).

Your drives and PCI cards are supposed to run at 33mhz. If they run out of spec then strange things can happen. Their speed is linked to the FSB speed. Hence if you want to overclock it is desireable to keep the FSB speed constant so your system stays stable. ATA XX refers to the theoretical maximum bandwidth of the interface. ATA 66 is 66MB/second. Drives are much slower so the interface is not too important. Faster interfaces will have slightly less overhead (not worth worrying about).

RAM speed is linked to the FSB speed. Normally RAM speed and FSB speed are in a 1:1 ratio, but if you want to overclock you can change it to 3:2 or 5:4.

Andrew. Re: mobo compatible with the Raptor. I really don't know but if you slide over to the Canopus forums they should be able to help you.

http://forum.canopus.com/ubbthreads.php

Will get you there.

Hi Mike,

I posted under "General Forums" with the thread being called "MSI 865PE Neo2 and DVRaptor" my user name there is Bataleur.

See you there.

Cheers
Andrew


Hi Glenn,

thanks again for the info. The software solution may enable me to see the 180 gig drive but it does not allow me to copy large file to it. I have just written a Premiere project to an .avi on a seperate drive. The .avi is 12gig's and will not copy an paste yet smaller files will. Is this drive issue or a size issue? As I will be buying a new mobo I am loathed to spend on an ATA card to fill a one or two week void.

With regard to overclocking I am generally not a big fan but this does not sound to bad. So the board will sense when it needs to be faster and for that period only will overclock and return to normal when less stressed?

All a bit confusing, I understand that with a 200 FSB and a 2,4gig processor one would use a multiplier of 12X. Why then do they claim 800 as a FSB, is this misleading advertising?

With regard to drive speed are you implying that although I have ATA100 compatible drives that I will not benefit from the ATA100 controller card as the drives cannot run that fast anyway. If so why have I bought ATA100 compatible drives?

Cheers
Andrew

<<With regard to overclocking I am generally not a big fan but this does not sound to bad. So the board will sense when it needs to be faster and for that period only will overclock and return to normal when less stressed?>>

Glenn, if you see the data for the other boards you will find that most of the brands do overcklocking rising slightly the bus speed and voltages permanently. What's clever with the MSI board is that they are may be overclocking a bit harder at certain moments but leaning back to normal when not high resources are needed. You can chose the level of overclocking which is nice. Without "dynamic overclocking" the Neo2-FIS2R still sports top places in the most benchmarks and the bundle is very nice.

Of coarse I don't say that the differences are big and the result on tomshardware are achieved using top of the cream memory, video card and newest drivers all requiring skills and knowledge.

thanks again for the info. The software solution may enable me to see the 180 gig drive but it does not allow me to copy large file to it. I have just written a Premiere project to an .avi on a seperate drive. The .avi is 12gig's and will not copy an paste yet smaller files will. Is this drive issue or a size issue? As I will be buying a new mobo I am loathed to spend on an ATA card to fill a one or two week void.
Maybe you formatted the drive to use the FAT32 file system and you're hitting the 2GB limit? Try NTFS in that case.


With regard to overclocking I am generally not a big fan but this does not sound to bad. So the board will sense when it needs to be faster and for that period only will overclock and return to normal when less stressed?
It will overclock itself when it senses that the CPU is stressed. That's what I understand of it. It overclocks very mildly so unless you are using very poor RAM or your system is really hot then you shouldn't have a problem with that. If you are concerned then you can check system stability by running prime95 under torture test (free).

All a bit confusing, I understand that with a 200 FSB and a 2,4gig processor one would use a multiplier of 12X. Why then do they claim 800 as a FSB, is this misleading advertising?
Advertisers advertise the FSB speed at 4X of what it is because the bus is quad pumped or something like that. Anyways it's easy enough to differentiate between the marketing number and the real number.

With regard to drive speed are you implying that although I have ATA100 compatible drives that I will not benefit from the ATA100 controller card as the drives cannot run that fast anyway. If so why have I bought ATA100 compatible drives?

ATA100 compatible drives are more future proof? Usually the motherboard makers like to stay ahead of hard drive technology advances so they implement interfaces with plenty of headroom. You still might run into the 137GB limit in which case you might need an ATA adapter card or something like it to see the drive's full size.