Computer Question

[Andy Abulafia]

I just got a decent SSD from Amazon and although it’s a small drive I use it for my “active” vegas project files and OS. Might take some of the bottleneck away from your external drive, maybe?

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Vegas 11, Win7, Intel i7 w/12GB RAM – In need of a decent SSD, methinks 🙂 Sony TG5V, Kodak Zi8, Playtouch.

[Jeff Bieber]

Thanks again Jeff. Here is what I’m looking at.

Chenbro RM42200 Rackmount Enclosure
Corsair 1200W Power Supply
ASUS P9X79WS Mainboard
Core i7-3930K 3.20 GHz Processor
Cooler Master 212 EVO CPU Cooler
Crucial Dominator GT 16GB DDR3 2133MHz
Crucial 256GB SSD
Buffalo 1TB External Drive with built in back-up software
LiteOn DVD/RW with DL support
EVGA GTX570 with 2.56GB GDDR5 SDRAM
StarTech 6 Gbps eSATA Card
Windows 7 Professional

I currently have 3 external 2TB Glyph drives.

[Jeff Schroeder]

This is an expensive rig! Are you a pro, or going to be pro? If so your backup is a bit small. I would save some money on the SSD and put *ONLY* the OS and software on it. I would order a pair of 2TB (64M buffer) drives and plug them into the SATA RAID 6Gb/s ports as a striped drive. The six cores are fast but at this time very pricey. Did you pick these parts or was it someone getting commission on the sales?

What exactly do you want to do with video editing? What is you camera stock?

Jeff

Windows 7 64-bit, ASUS P6X58D, i7 960 3.20GHz, 24.0GB DDR3, 12TB connected storage

[Jeff Bieber]

No not a pro. I work for a professional teacher development company. We are in the process of making a video subscription site filled of 10-15 min videos of teachers leading lessons in a classroom of children. I shoot the video and edit it. The video is shot on 2 Sony HXR-MC50 cameras at the 1920 x 1080 at 24mbps.

I got the specs from numerous websites. Our company has a group that builds all our computers for us. They quoted me $2900 for that computer.

My plan is to take my current I5 and use it for rendering and any other processes so the new machine will only be used for editing.

Do you think, I think I can save the money on the SSD drive and just get another fast internal drive for OS and Vegas.

[Jeff Schroeder]

Hosting the OS and software is where the SSD really earns it’s pay. I have 2 systems built this way. That’s your choice. It won’t make a bit of difference for your preview. The problem is you’re not going to want the wasted space of a fast drive that you marked off as OS only. Have you seen any 120 GB (spinning) drives. I don’t think they make them anymore. That’s why I use SSD’s that are just big enough. (Mine is 60GB.)

Your cameras are AVCHD – processor intensive. Decent for the work you describe. Are you doing a lot of color correction. This can be expensive for processor cycles. A well timed white (or color) balance may help.

According to your post you will have great editing but slow rendering.

For that money (or less) you could put together a 2-chip Xeon, although the chips in your price-range would not be hyper-thread capable. Still 8 real cores at about ~2.5 GHz is nothing to sneeze at. Don’t let me confuse you.

Overall the price is about right.

Jeff

Windows 7 64-bit, ASUS P6X58D, i7 960 3.20GHz, 24.0GB DDR3, 12TB connected storage

[Jeff Bieber]

That helps a lot. I don’t do much color correction. I do white balance every individual video I shoot so maybe a instance of color correction. Becuase the teachers are in front of a document camera, smartboard or projector, I do have to use the FBMN Exposure GPU pluggin in on almost every clip to fine tune the exposure.

My boss is ok with the $2900 for the computer. I just need to make sure there will not be the bottlenecks that I’m running into now. My last computer was highly suggested by a video company and has been nothing but trouble for me.

I’m fine with the speed of rendering. I will have my old computer doing that.

Thanks again. I wish there was a way I could buy you lunch.

[Jeff Schroeder]

Not a problem Jeff, Keep me posted on how this rig is working. And maybe post some samples.

Jeff

Windows 7 64-bit, ASUS P6X58D, i7 960 3.20GHz, 24.0GB DDR3, 12TB connected storage

[Jerry Bruck]

This may be just what you need:
https://www.hardware-revolution.com/best-mainstream-workstation-reliable-powerful-quiet/

You’ll notice that the author offers to babysit your efforts, and for free. I join the DIY advice here — you could save not just hundreds but thousands, not to mention knowing much better the horse you will be riding and being more fluent when it comes to upgrades or repairs.

The high-end workstation build alternatives, which will be organized around the new dual xeon E5 26xx line, is promised for pretty soon, but could proves weeks or even months off, let me warn you. But the current one is fresh and should be an improvement on the best being discussed. The matter of video cards is special to the editing application and made need some further advice.

(Haven’t yet managed to read all the posts in this thread, forgive me if I’m not the first with this link. Can’t find the “flat view” button)