Computer system

[Sean Stringer]

Awesome, I’ll check them out as well.

Thanks

[Chamberlain_v]

I’d go with the new IntelMacs all the way. You can’t beat the price of $2500 for a quad-core setup. It’s true you have to get new editing software, but FCP is IMO the best NLE editor around. It has taken Adobe 7 iterations to get where FCP is at. I’ve used both. The only downside is the fact that AE doesn’t run natively on Intelmacs. I’ve heard anywhere from 50-80 percent slower performance on Intelmacs with AE under Rosetta emulation.

Going with Alienware, OverdrivePC, or VoodooPC are great options if you want high performance machines and you want reliability. However, for editing I go the route of custom built. I spec’d this out on Newegg for under $3000:

Intel Core Duo 2 – Dual-core Conroe 2.66ghz
Motherboard
2 gigs of DDR2 667 ram
4 SATA II hard drives
Nvidia 7950GX2 1GB GDDR3(SLI)
600watt powersupply
Full Tower Case
8x SATA II raid controller
Creative X-Fi Extreme

Take away the Creative card, raid controller,2 harddrives and you’ve just got a top of the line machine for about $1900. Use the extra for a capture card from AJA or Blackmagic.

Oh, and if you are editing with uncompressed HD, there’s a reason why some companies like Matrox requires you to use their specific hardware, because those components are picky as heck. They test & certify that all the components are compatible and working seemlessly together.

Here’s some more specs:

HDV – ~25mb/sec max
DVCPRO – ~100mb/sec
HDCAM – ~140mb/sec

Meaning your hard drives need to be able to handle at least a video stream coming in at ~100mb/sec. Only way to handle a video stream that size without dropping out is to go raid.

Hope this info helps you.

[Sean Stringer]

Outstanding!

Thanks Chamberlain