What specs would your PC need to have to be able to edit

Subtle Sorrow · Post by **Subtle Sorrow** » Fri Jul 25, 2008 1:49 pm

I don't mean just downloading a fansub and doing some basic stuff in WMM. I mean using Adobe Premiere Pro 2, and after effects etc. What things would you want to get so you can edit.

I'm asking this because I'm going to buy a new PC in a couple of months, and I want to spend 1000 pounds on a PC ( just the computer, not monitors etc.)

Malificus · Post by **Malificus** » Fri Jul 25, 2008 1:59 pm

One quick way to tell would be to check the requirements of the editing software you'd like to use.

Zarxrax · Post by **Zarxrax** » Fri Jul 25, 2008 2:00 pm

Years ago, I would run Adobe Premiere 6 on a 650mhz machine with 512mb or ram. It was quite quick and responsive.

Today I have a 2.7ghz quad-core machine with 4gb of ram, and it struggles with premiere pro and after effects.

Org Profile · Post by **Otohiko** » Fri Jul 25, 2008 2:02 pm

I don't think you can go wrong these days - any computer in that price range will do you good. Even 5 years ago a computer in that price range would've done all you wanted, just that rendering previews etc. would take longer. For you it's more a question of best value for your buck.

The other question is, what else do you want to do with your computer? If you're getting the PC just for editing, for example, you wouldn't need to bother with things like fancy video cards, and that'd let you invest in the processor and RAM. But if you're planning to be gaming on this PC as well, then that'd be something to look out for.

Org Profile · Post by **Otohiko** » Fri Jul 25, 2008 3:14 pm

Zarxrax wrote: Today I have a 2.7ghz quad-core machine with 4gb of ram, and it struggles with premiere pro and after effects.

Well, I think that's also more due to the fact that editors' requirements have gone up in some cases a lot more than software ones. I generally do moderately simple editing, and my dual-core AMD 4600+ (processor cost <$200 a year ago when I bought it) is really fast for my purposes, and hell, it encodes DVD-sized mp4s in pretty much real time.

However yea, if you're doing AE or any other sort of technically-complex stuff, you're looking at a much higher entry price.

BasharOfTheAges · Post by **BasharOfTheAges** » Fri Jul 25, 2008 4:41 pm

And then there's always the RAM limit. Unless you're running a 64-bit OS, you're limited to 4GB of addressable space - taking all your I/O devices and bootrom into account, you're down to a 3.5GB limit of usable RAM on a 32-bit OS.

leahzero · Post by **leahzero** » Fri Jul 25, 2008 5:28 pm

DOKTOP KPbI/\OB wrote:However yea, if you're doing AE or any other sort of technically-complex stuff, you're looking at a much higher entry price.

Not necessarily "much higher." It depends on what you're doing and what your workflow is like. AE runs like a dream even on machines that are modest by today's standards (e.g. my previous PC, a single-core P4 that lasted a good 4 years) when you make intelligent decisions about comping and rendering. Noobs who lump everything into one comp and stack 10 effects on each layer may encounter different results.

Willen · Post by **Willen** » Sat Jul 26, 2008 6:23 am

For £1000 you should be able to get something that will have little problem editing videos.

If I was buying a desktop PC for editing today, I'd get something with these specs:

Intel Core 2 Duo or Quad CPU (Quad core may help out when rendering video)
Dedicated graphics card (GPU type doesn't matter much unless you intend to play games)
4GB RAM
1TB 7200rpm SATA HDD (depending on your storage habits, you may need more or less)

You could easily get something with these requirements for about £500 or less.

leahzero · Post by **leahzero** » Sat Jul 26, 2008 11:23 am

Quad core makes a HUGE difference for video rendering speed, as well as ripping DVDs, encoding files, and anything else that relies on pure CPU power. Especially if you get an Intel 45nm chip with SSE4. If you do a lot of any of the tasks listed here, a quad core is a great investment.

trythil · Post by **trythil** » Sat Jul 26, 2008 5:03 pm

leahzero wrote:Quad core makes a HUGE difference for video rendering speed, as well as ripping DVDs, encoding files, and anything else that relies on pure CPU power.

Not unless the processes you're performing are parallelized, of course.

To speak of some tools in common use: DVD Decrypter and SmartRipper certainly don't. Premiere Pro may have been updated to do so, but to my knowledge rendering in Premiere Pro still makes use of only one core. On the other side of things, After Effects' rendering engine can take advantage of multiple cores and machines. So can many 3D rendering engines. Audio rendering systems occasionally can spread work across audio renderfarms, though I don't think that's a really common case here.

The OS task scheduler can distribute more (serial) work across the additional cores, and that helps somewhat with responsiveness and individual program performance, but only to a point. Eventually you hit bottlenecks from RAM or disk, and the only way around that is to re-work algorithms.