Editing system questions.

[Adam Gold]

Nice job, Terry -- looks like you've got this pretty much nailed. Just a couple of minor and possibly irrelevant clarifications:

The tape from your cam is digital, too, not analog (assuming we're talking DV, HDV or even Dig8. VHS, Hi8, etc were analog). But doesn't really change anything you said.

There is, however, some debate about how fast your system drive should be. Remember, your NLE (Vegas) will likely be on that drive as well, and maybe even your project files, so there will be a lot going on. Many people feel it's necessary to have a really fast system drive for that reason -- mine is 10K so I obviously drank that Kool-Aid. Maybe foolishly.

Anyway, something to think about.

[Terry Lee]

Originally Posted by Perrone Ford

In the general sense we are speaking, you are getting it pretty well. I'll hold off on the semantics of a codec versus a container for now, but your idea is exactly right.

I learn from the best! I can handle a bit of technical stuff if you don't mind explaining :)List looks pretty good, but the RAM is a bit short. If you are going to do much work with HD, I recommend 8GB of RAM and a 64bit OS. Windows 7 comes out shortly and it's excellent. We've been running it for months at my office with no problems. Monitor choice looks ok too.

I can get a copy of Windows 7. I have a friend who has a software subscription for her company.

Just a warning on the Hard drive. HD takes up a LOT of room. HDV like your camrea is HIGHLY compressed. And when you put it on your computer you can either choose to edit in that highly compressed format, or you can expand it into a format that is more suitable for editing. If you choose the later, you'll be looking at about 1GB per minute or more. Uncompressed HD is 550GB per hour, but not many people try to edit in uncompressed. But it would not be unusual to see something like 100GB per hour or so for a good editing format. Plan accordingly.

So the best way to edit my footage is to bring it in uncompressed (which Vegas will give me an option for?). What would be the advantages of this? Just curious so I can explain the reason instead of "well I heard from someone"

The OS does not need a superfast hard drive. A 7200RPM drive is MORE than sufficient. The entire OS kernal will fit into RAM, reducing the need for a lot of speedy hard drive.

So I can put the OS and Vegas on the 1TB HD? Or should I still get another HD?

Many people are holding off. I will ask you to consider this. You have your originals on tape. You put all of it on the timeline, edit, color, etc. Then you create a finished master file with all your hours of work. How will you save that file? It will be 20GB per hour or so. I hear many people talk about not buying bluray because they have the original tapes on the shelves. Terrific. But what about all that work you just did? Do you choose not to protect it? I bought a BluRay recorder not to deliver BluRay disks for clients, but to archive my hard work. With 25GB discs costing about $2.50, it's CHEAP insurance.

Very good point. A bluray burner is definately in the future.

[Terry Lee]

Originally Posted by Adam Gold

Nice job, Terry -- looks like you've got this pretty much nailed.

Thanks!

There is, however, some debate about how fast your system drive should be. Remember, your NLE (Vegas) will likely be on that drive as well, and maybe even your project files, so there will be a lot going on. Many people feel it's necessary to have a really fast system drive for that reason -- mine is 10K so I obviously drank that Kool-Aid. Maybe foolishly.

So in other words the hard drive you have doesn't compensate for the amount of stuff you are putting on it but makes up in speed?

[Perrone Ford]

Originally Posted by Terry Lee

So the best way to edit my footage is to bring it in uncompressed (which Vegas will give me an option for?). What would be the advantages of this? Just curious so I can explain the reason instead of "well I heard from someone"

I am absolutely NOT saying uncompressed is the best way to edit. Far from it. I am only saying that in some instances you may need uncompressed and to plan for that. But in any event, you are going to need some room. Many people under-plan their drive space. When I work on a project, I've got the raw materials out of the camera, an HD master, an SD master, and then my final master render. For some of my conference work that can be 3 HD copies of a 4-8 hour conference. Plan accordingly.

Originally Posted by Terry Lee

So I can put the OS and Vegas on the 1TB HD? Or should I still get another HD?

If you get 2 HDs for your system, then you put your OS and programs on one, and your video on the other. If you have 3 drives, I would put the OS and Vegas on one, the original files on one drive, and render to the third. This idea of putting Vegas on a separate drive from the OS is something I just don't get.

Originally Posted by Terry Lee

Very good point. A bluray burner is definately in the future.

A BluRay burner will quickly become your new best friend. I will be moving my entire miniDV tape collection to BluRay next year.

[Terry Lee]

The outline for my system that I have currently is just to get me going. I definately plan on upping my Hard drive space in the future. As for now, I am building a system that is prepared to take on any challenge I may encounter. Maybe not ANY, but atleast be equipt with equipment that I can add to in the future and the machine still be adequate.

So my current build's main stay is the Core i7, the 22" LG monitor, the Biostar mother board, 8 gig of RAM, the 1tb WD hard drive and a seperate hard drive for my OS. When more money is free I will add another hard drive, maybe more RAM and a second monitor.

The problem now is that my money is being spread out into different projects all in the effort to make a film. This little system will cost me quite a bit of that budget but I feel it is necessary. The only thing I haven't added to this system's cost is Vegas itself which retail is $600. I am also considering Cineform so that I can remove pulldown from the 24pf of the HV30.

[Harm Millaard]

Why would you opt for 8 GB of RAM on an i7 system, when the only sensible options are 6 or 12 GB with DDR3?

[Adam Gold]

Originally Posted by Terry Lee

So in other words the hard drive you have doesn't compensate for the amount of stuff you are putting on it but makes up in speed?

I'm sorry; I'm not understanding your question.

My C: (system) drive is small but fast, because all I have on it are the OS and Programs, and as this is an editing-only dedicated machine, there's not a lot on it other than Windows, Premiere and Cineform. I have the swap file on a different drive.

Perrone's advice, above, is best: "the OS and Vegas on one, the original [captured raw video] files on [a second] drive, and render to the third."

WRT RAM and Harm's question above, I think many people are confused because previously, RAM always seemed to be installed in multiples if 2 or 4, but with the new i7 it seems to be in multiples of 3. I'm not smart enough to know why.

[Harm Millaard]

Adam,

I think I know you somewhat and you are intentionally inviting me to add some background info for others. Well, I fell for it. You succeeded.

On computers, memory was either organized as DDR2, dual channel memory or lately as DDR3, triple channel memory. In the old ages we had DDR or single channel memory. Compare that to a road, single channel memory is comparable to a single lane and when you meet another car going in the opposing direction, you have to slow down, get to a bypass and let the other driver pass you. With dual channel memory you get a dual lane for traffic, so one can easily drive on on his designated lane, while a driver from the other side can drive on his lane without delays. A lot of improvement. But still we got traffic jams, so we invented a new approach, triple channel memory or triple lanes in traffic, as we see them in France for example. It makes for better flow of traffic, as it does with better flow of data to and from memory.

Currently the most economic memory sticks are 2 GB sticks.

On DDR2 (LGA 775) boards that will allow for 4 sticks of 2 GB each, totaling 8 GB. This will allow dual channel/lane operation as designated in the number 2 in DDR2.

On DDR3 (LGA 1366) boards that will allow for 6 sticks of 2 GB each, totaling 12 GB. This will allow triple channel/lane operation as designated in the number 3 in DDR3.

This is a very simplified approach (and therefore not very accurate for the techies here) that may help to understand the bare basics of memory.

BTW, I was asked by my son to help him (mostly it is the other way around) to design a new server for his own use (not business) and he only required VM ESX/ESXi support, so we ended up looking at the HP ProLiant G6 with dual X5570's, 72 GB RDDR3 ECC (18 sticks), 4 FlexNet NIC's, HP Smart Array and separate housing for 6 G SAS SFF disks and iLO capability.....I'll tell you about that by private mail.

[Terry Lee]

Originally Posted by Harm Millaard

Why would you opt for 8 GB of RAM on an i7 system, when the only sensible options are 6 or 12 GB with DDR3?

Well I opted for 8GB simply because Perrone suggestion it :)

Adam, I suppose I didn't understand what you mean by your post. Maybe you meant its not necessary to have a super fast system drive? Should I just get a low GB hard drive that spins 7200rpm or..?


Something else I forgot to ask about - Graphics card. I have heard that a good one isn't really necessary you just need one better than the onboard for Vegas.

[Harm Millaard]

Terry,

For the boot disk capacity is not really important, anything with 150+ GB will do. It is a waste of space to use a 1 TB disk, when you only have 60-80 GB in use. But the faster the disk is, the better, because during editing the program (in your case Vegas) will need certain DLL's, depending on your editing, Windows will need to perform housekeeping chores and they all need to come from the boot disk.

As always it depends on your budget. If you can afford it, get a WD Velociraptor 150, but if that is just a bit much, consider a 7200 RPM 160 G or larger disk.

For a graphics card, I am partial to ATI. Most NLE's will not profit much from the top cards. If you do not use 3D applications, nVidia Quadro cards are a waste of money IMO. In a direct comparison ATI usually is a lot cheaper than comparable nVidia cards, so my personal preference would go to an ATI card in the 48xx range, rather than the nVidia GTX 28x/29x range. All of these cards are good, but if you can get a 4890 for $ 200 instead of a GTX 285 for $ 300, consider investing in the ATI and use the saving for another disk. Performance wise you will be hard pressed to notice any difference between these video cards for editing.

[Perrone Ford]

Originally Posted by Harm Millaard

Performance wise you will be hard pressed to notice any difference between these video cards for editing.

While this is true, I kept noticing that applications that I wanted to use only supported the NVidia card on PC. So I went that way on both the laptop and desktop. It's funny that I seem to experience very few of the issues that seem to plague other users. I have Quadro cards installed. Expensive, but worth it in my view.

[Harm Millaard]

Originally Posted by Perrone Ford

While this is true, I kept noticing that applications that I wanted to use only supported the NVidia card on PC. So I went that way on both the laptop and desktop. It's funny that I seem to experience very few of the issues that seem to plague other users. I have Quadro cards installed. Expensive, but worth it in my view.

First of all, I don't use Vegas, but Adobe CS4 MC, so that is a significant difference.

Adobe recently had some problems with nVidia cards, but that was not the reason of my preference for ATI. The reason is purely 'bang-for-the-buck' based.

The reason I'm not fond of nVidia Quadro cards is that the drivers claim almost exclusive rights to the PCI-e bus, thereby drastically slowing down disk performance when using a PCI-e raid controller. When that happens, all the performance gains from a high-end card disappear when the I/O system is slowed down to a crawl. The marginal advantage of Quadro cards in NLE (not talking about 3D applications) in comparison to the more affordable GTX or ATI cards do not warrant the price difference IMO.

In gamers land the video card is much touted and even SLI with 2, 3, or even 4 cards are popular. In NLE land this is a plain waste of money with current software.

[Terry Lee]

Alright so far my machine comes to a total of $1003.44 with shipping.

Western Digital Caviar Green WD10EADS Hard Drive - 1TB, 32MB, SATA-300

BIOSTAR TPOWER X58A LGA 1366 Intel X58 ATX Intel Motherboard (open box from newegg.. Think I can trust that? Its considerably cheaper this rout..)

OCZ DDR3 PC3-14400 Platinum Series Low-Voltage Triple Channel (6GB)

LG W2253TQ-PF 22" Widescreen LCD Monitor - 1080p, 1920x1080, 50000:1, 2ms, 16:9, DVI, VGA

i7 920

Western Digital VelociRaptor WD1500HLFS 150GB 10000 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb

Bluray burner will hold for now.

I now have to get Sony Vegas which = $600. Know anyway I can get it cheaper..like for free on a burnt disc or from a university?

Again, thanks everyone for your help. I really appreciate it.
Terry.

[Perrone Ford]

Originally Posted by Harm Millaard

First of all, I don't use Vegas, but Adobe CS4 MC, so that is a significant difference.

In gamers land the video card is much touted and even SLI with 2, 3, or even 4 cards are popular. In NLE land this is a plain waste of money with current software.

Well, being able to support cutting RED was a need I had. Until Vegas 9.0, the only way to do that was with RedCine. Redcine did not support ATI on the PC at all. Zero. So for me it was a practical choice of buying a card that my application supported, or trying to save a few bucks.

[Perrone Ford]

Originally Posted by Terry Lee

I now have to get Sony Vegas which = $600. Know anyway I can get it cheaper..like for free on a burnt disc or from a university?

You're going to find that people typically take a very dim view on this kind of thing here. While we may have our issues with companies that make NLEs, we know that our dollars go to support these companies, and we rely on them heavily for support. Getting hacked versions does nothing to help them, or us. And many of us will not offer any assistance to users who have hacked versions. I know I won't and have seen other professionals do the same.