What hardware setup to use for video editing?

[Gunnar1979]

Well, I am relatively new to the desktop video editing scene. At work there are all kinds of nice Macs that are worth a lot of money, but at home I have lowly pc that I am looking to take the plunge with. Currently, I have a MillG200(8mb sgram ver),with a rainbow runner g-series card on the way. When I first get the card I am going to plug it into my PII300 (oc'd 233) on an Abit LX6. Before you make fun of me, I wanted some hardware suggestions for a new system that I can regurgitate my RRG into. Currently I am thinking:

Athlon 800+ (no intel here)
Next gen ddr chipset(AMD760/Micron Samurai)
128 ddr sdram
adaptec 2940u2w controller
IBM 20g ultra(or ultra2) hdd
some sound card
matrox card comp w/RRG (probably my g200)

I am very fond of my g200, nothing seems to crack it, whether it be motherboard shorts, heat, or reckless overclocking. I don't play 3D games, so I couldn't care less about Quake, I just want to edit movies (some web design) with my rrg.

More to the point, I plan on editing clips that are no longer than half an hour, at which point I plan on editing and compressing it. For this I thought that bandwidth would be important, and cpu load balancing. The Athlon is cheap and mighty quick, but since the IDE interrupts/requests queue up on the processor, I thought that SCSI is a must for lossless capture. Whats more, the bandwidth for editing a decompressed stream only seems satisfied with U-SCSI (though 10,000 rpm s overkill).

Question is, what controller/HDD to use? And is this enough bandwidth (i.e. good setup) for video editing? (I am planning on auctioning my Powerbook for money, unfortunately)

[This_Idiot]

I wouldn't worry about the kind of hardware that you are talking about for a Rainbow Runner. As long as you are using at least Windows 95 OSR2 so that you can switch DMA on then any UDMA drive (from 33 upwards) should give enough belt to be perfectly usable. By all means buy extra RAM up to 128Mb, and HD space.

To give you an example, the machine that I am currently using is a P2 266 with a 4Gb prime drive and an 8Gb AVI drive (both UDMA33) using the onboard controller. 96Mb of RAM, Marvel G200 for analogue capture and ADS Pyro for DV. OK, not as swift as my Celeron 450, but it gets the job done without fuss.

That isn't to say that you shouldn't be looking at upgrading your PC - just that it may not be a necessity.

[Gunnar1979]

Can you capture a half hour's worth of uncompressed video without dropping a frame? Basically, I want to experiment with remaster some vhs tapes onto vcds (with menus etc at some point). Seeing all the great open source freeware has me thinking that there are possibilites.

The oc'd PII(which has been oc'd for about 3 years now) has 96 mb of ram, and is running on a 75mhz bus. Incidentally, I must ask, does the RRG take well to an oc'd environment?

Do you need a scsi disk subsystem to sustain full framerate capture (I would like D1 resolution, but for VCD 352NTSC as a minimum)?

------------------
I am a desktop video rookie with no money.

[This_Idiot]

Ouch, you didnt mention uncompressed !

I'd mess about with RRs native MJPEG before worrying about uncompressed video. If that is you real aim then the RR may not have been the best choice. Regardless, if you are adamant on uncompressed then you need to do a lot of research right here on the forum - there's been reams written on it by a variety of people. In this case you'll need something like a P3 700+ (or equivalent) and a Fasttrak IDE raid array with enough HD space to capture AND EDIT your longest project.

Try searching the forum for "virtualdub", "huffy", "flying dutchman" for more info.

[Dr Mordrid]

The Marvel and RR-G can both do uncompressed nicely. That's what all the hubub about YUY2 and the HuffYUV codec is about. They can also do uncompressed RGB captures if your drive subsystem can handle it, but YUY2 is better since the RGB signal is derived from the YUY2 signal anyhow and the data rate is 20% lower.

Just install the 1.52 drivers (1.54 doesn't work with YUY2) and get the Flying Dutchman YUY2 utility from the download page here. Next install the HuffYUV codec from;

http://www.math.berkeley.edu/~benrg/huffyuv.html

To get the drive speed necessary consider a Fasttrak66 or Fasttrak100 based RAID0 array. Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 40 drives offer the best bang/buck with the 20 gig models running about $139 each. Three would do nicely.

I have three Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 40 40 gigs hanging off a Fasttrak66 in a 120 gig array and it screams. 48-50 mb/sec easily.

Dr. Mordrid



[This message has been edited by Dr Mordrid (edited 27 July 2000).]

[Pertti]

Gunnar,

So far non-Intel chipsets have been a no-no in NLE, but who knows about the future ones, we sure need some real competition here (although the platform is not called Wintel for nothing).

If you plan on sending your videos to tape or TV, you will need the TV-Out module as the Millenium G200 doesn't have one like the Mystique G200 does.

Don't waste your money on SCSI disks, if you want to capture uncompressed video, you will need to get a Promise FastTrak Raid0 controller and some ATA66/100 HD:s.

With SCSI you will just end up with expensive disks, which will be too small and too slow, all too soon.

Pertti

btw. whatever HD:s you get, you will need at least two.

[Gunnar1979]

Hmm, SCSI certainly does sound a lot more appealing since HDD is not so dependent on the CPU. It would probably allow for better capture at higher resolutions, while utilizing a filter during capture.

In terms of multiple HDD's, I have a couple of IDE drives around for loading software(none to big though) etc., but I wanted to add another drive dedicated to capturing video. Would having the capturing utils on the IDE drive interfere with the performance of the computer's secondary drive during capture?

Lastly, as of right now my system is overclocked, the Mill has never caused a problem, but will the RRG dislike an oc'd system? I was even planning on using mgatweak to tweak the g200, but I am not sure how the RRG will react. And does tweaking the card improve video performance (or is it exclusively for games?)?

[Pertti]

Gunnar,

SCSI may sound more professional, and when you bring the subject up with just about any sales/marketing person, they are the first to make the claim that IDE drives will not do in NLE.

That was true in the past (several years ago), before we got working and stable BM drivers for IDE disks, but ever since the release of OSR2 (W95B) the prosessor load for IDE is as low as for SCSI.

20GB:s is not much, and at the price of the bare 20GB IBM SCSI drive, you can buy two Maxtor 20GB drives, a Promise FastTrak ATA100 and a nice dinner at the restaurant of your choice.
If you have to buy the SCSI controller as well, you can add yet another 20GB Maxtor into the deal and maybe invite a friend to join at the dinner

The 2x20GB or 3x20GB stripe sets will get you better performance and more space than the single SCSI drive...
(SCSI is just the interface, and as such doesn't speed up the transfer rates)

SCSI has some advantages when dealing with large databases, but in NLE it is just a waste of money.

Having a smaller HD for the OS and programs is what everyone here will be recommending, it will not interfere with anything, but it would be better if the drive supports at least ATA33.

In general, overclocking the bus speed is not recommended.

Pertti

[Prospero]

Just a side note here. I do my editing on a MSI 6167 Athlon board with an AMD chipset with no trouble at all. In fact, it's one of the most stable systems I've ever owned. That's including my secondary BX chipset box. You should do fine with your proposed setup, as long as the DDR chipsets are as stable as the current ones. I would however, go with the IDE raid solution.

[Walrus]

Gunnar1979: From what I've seen of current Athlon motherboards, I think you'll be fine with it as long as it's an ASUS board. Get at least 128 megs of ram, and I have to agree that IDE is a much more cost effective solution than SCSI. SCSI's only real advantages are in very VERY expensive RAID setups, the fact that you can connect up to 15 devices to a single controller, and that you can have concurrent commands going over that controller. If you want to add a CD-RW drive, a nice tape backup and other devices, I do recommend getting a SCSI controller for those. But unless you need a major database server on a SCSI RAID controller with 32 megs of ram with 15,000 RPM hard drives or more than 4 hard drives, I recommend you just get a few IBM 7200 rpm IDE drives. IDE's CPU utilization is no worse than SCSI if it's in DMA mode (I have SCSI and IDE HDs on my system and my 7200 RPM IDE 20 gig IBM outperforms my 7200 RPM Ultra-2 Wide SCSI 9.1 GB IBM). The biggest thing to keep in mind is keep your hard drives on seperate IDE channels. As for IDE RAID.. I'm not convinced it's needed for uncompressed capture. The newer 7200 RPM IDEs (eg: the IBM 20+ giggers) handle HuffYUV captures in full resolution without a hitch on my system (even my 5400 rpm models!). If the hard drive can sustain about 10 MB/sec, it should be more than adequate. While this isn't quite the same thing as uncompressed, in reality the stream will decode EXACTLY the same as the source, so you get all of the advantages of an uncompressed capture with a much smaller and easier to handle capture.