• Adobe Premiere Pro

  Will a Dell Optiplex 380 run CS5 Production Premium?

  Posted by Peter Wardley-repen on June 15, 2011 at 4:04 pm

  Hi All

  Just started a new job and the bosses want me to shoot and edit some video – mostly talking heads, topped and tailed with fades, credits and lower thirds. They’ll pay for CS5PP, but not a new computer. My desktop machine is a Dell Optiplex 380 with a 3GHz Core 2 Duo, 4GB RAM and a 250GB 7200rpm hard drive. The only sticking point I can see is the graphics – a bog-standard on-board Intel G41 chipset with a straight 1280×1024 output (there’s also what looks like it could be a DVI port, but I’ve not seen one for a while, so I’m unsure).

  Here’s my question: Will this machine, as configured, enable me to do a reasonable level of (non-broadcast) video editing?

  I’ll be taking footage from a Panasonic domestic HD camera (model unknown as yet – I’ll post it if I can find out), probably via a SD card reader, and outputting to DVD and YouTube/Vimeo. Not too worried about realtime rendering, but smooth realtime playback/previews would be essential, obviously.

  The last setup I used was a Mac Pro with FCP and all the trimmings, so I’m not used to working on this tight a budget!

  Any thoughts?

  Thanks in advance…

  Peter Wardley-repen replied 15 years, 2 months ago 2 Members · 2 Replies
• 2 Replies

• 

  Alex Gerulaitis

  June 15, 2011 at 10:25 pm

  If it’s Windows 7 or Vista 64-bit – it will run but expect long transcoding, rendering and encoding times and possibly other issues. E.g. after you import the AVCHD or H264 HD video from the camera, it’s highly unlikely it will play right away – you’d have to wait till it’s transcoded.

  If it’s anything other than 64-bit Win7 or Vista – no; at least not Pr or AE CS5.x; you have to use CS4.

  If there is any budget to upgrade this system a bit, it’s (1) an extra internal hard drive (or a USB 3.0 card with a USB 3.0 external 7200rpm HDD), (2) a faster graphics card, (3) another 4GB RAM.

  Alex (DV411)
• 

  Peter Wardley-repen

  June 16, 2011 at 7:54 am

  Many thanks for that, Alex! Yep, it’s Win7 Professional 64-bit, so we’ll give it a go as it stands and if it proves to be unacceptably slow, we’ll progressively make the upgrades you suggest.

  Thanks again,

  Peter

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