Looking for an in-house video editing solution

[Mark Suszko]

“Render in real time?” Pretty much all the new edit systems and software can do that now. Even if it is actually happening in the background, the effect from the perspective of the user is that it’s all real-time. Since it’s free, give Resolve 14 a try, see if your machine has enough muscle for it. Yeah, there are outboard graphics processor boxes; you would use a thunderbolt connection to get the data throughput necessary, not sure USB would cut it. Connecting one of these outboard processors to your laptop may not me as important as adding a very fast external RAID.

[Jeff Pulera]

Hi Daniel,

What Mark said – the “RT” cards went away years ago. I had DV Storm, Matrox RT.X100 and RT.X2, DPS Velocity, etc. at once time or another. Since computers were SO slow back then, “real-time” effects cards were all the rage. Nobody makes these anymore.

Modern workstations, especially using a Core i7 processor, will handle most duties in real-time, and actually faster since the export often takes less than the duration of the timeline!

I’d not try editing 4K using CS5, as it may not even recognize the codec at all. Could try the free DaVinci Resolve that Mark mentioned, from Black Magic Design. Grass Valley EDIUS is also supposed to be good, test the free trial. Said to need less horsepower than latest Premiere CC, plus there are no ongoing subscription fees. As you have an i5, might provide more bang for the buck!

Whatever editing software you choose, use a dedicated hard drive for the video media, don’t try to run everything off a single C: drive. Get a decent USB 3.0 external drive for instance from Glyph, G-Tech, or LaCie as these are meant for desktop media needs.

Thanks

Jeff