nOOb Question about video & hardware.

[BeastlyKings]

This is what i have:
ABIT AS8 Intel 865PE Socket 775 Motherboard
512MB PC3200 DDR 400MHz RAM (soon to be 2Gb)
Pentium 4 P4 3.0 3GHz 630 LGA 775 775 CPU

This is what im going to get:
Two 120GB SATA hard drives set up in RAID 0
NVIDIA GEFORCE FX5500 256MB VIDEO CARD
and a bunch of other random stuff.

My mobo has a 800MHz FSB and my proccesor has that to.
My RAM has 400MHz bus speed but i think thats 400 on each side to total 800MHz.
Dont know much about the Video Card but its 256Mb and i think thats good enough, but i dont know.

I have not built this computer yet.
But i was wondering if these specs are good enough for some basic to moderate video editing?

All im really going to do is edit some snowboarding videos.
and mabey later i will get in to some other video editing but mostly basic stuff.

ThankYou!!

[koala]

Hi, welcome to TSF

Your CPU and graphics card are fine. The 2 most important things for video editing are RAM and hard drive space, you need lots of both.

2gb RAM should be enough unless you're editing really long videos, but you might find 2 x 120gb hard drives a bit on the low side, depending on how much free space is available, the length of your videos and what software you're going to be using.

Some video editors create temporary files that can be 5-10 times the size of the original video to allow for non-destructive editing. You will need to take this into account before starting a project, because if you run out of space halfway through editing there's a chance you could lose all your work and have to start over. (And remember to backup the original video before editing it).

So to answer your question, the computer you're planning on building will be fine for basic to moderate video editing, the one you have now will struggle with only 512mb RAM.

[BeastlyKings]

Thanks For the quick reply!!!

As for the hard drives, Would 2x160 or 2xSomthing really big, or somthing like that be enough?
And as for the RAM i will most likely go with 2Gb mabey even 3Gb if budget allows.
And i dont know of any good editing software, What would you recomend for a kinda strict budget?

Thanks For All The Help

[koala]

Windows Movie Maker is quite good and comes included with Windows. You can use it to cut & paste and move sections around in the timeline. Slightly more advanced are Avid Free DV or Zwei-Stein (both freeware) which include some basic effects. If you've got some spare money, then Adobe Premiere Elements ($100) is one of the best in its price range. Then there's Adobe Premiere Pro ($850) for the professionals.

2gb should be fine. I have 2gb, dual channel, fast 800mhz RAM that I use for Photoshop (which eats RAM for breakfast) and I've found it to be sufficient.

The size of your hard drives depends on the size of your videos and how much free space you have left after installing the OS and other programs. Obviously the bigger the better if you're going to be using them for editing and storing large video files.

[BeastlyKings]

Thanks i think that i will stick with windows movie maker.
And i think that 2x160 will work for me because im going to save all of my videos on a external hard drive instead of on the internal ones.


Thanks for the quick replys.

[sinclair_tm]

well, my take is on two other things, because i see that you will be upping the ram to 2gig, which you will need. i do the kind of video editing like you want to do on my mac, and i have a 300gig drive. just so you know, when working with 1hour of video, i loose at least 25gig of hard drive space in files that never go away until the project is done. so i do think that you are going to be at about where you want to start in size. more hard drive would be better, but do not go any less, and make sure that you don't have more than 3 hours of video that you are working on at once, wither its all in one project, or separate projects. now for the vid card, i think that you should not get anything less than a nvidia 6xxx card. i just got a 6800 gs for a relatively good price, and the 6600 cards are under $100 at places. as is with the 8xxx cards coming out, even the 6xxx cards are at the low end of things, which makes the 5xxx cards really far behind, even with loads of ram on them. and with video editing, you will be happier with a better video card. even more so if you decide to get vista later. my 6600 gt was having a hard time with vista b2 and rc1.

[BeastlyKings]

WOW 25 GIGS, thats alot for temorary files.
Or at least it seems that way for me.
ethier way.
Thanks for all the help!!
Bye