The best way to make a buyers guide is to break it down by budget. We are making assumptions about your needs and wants within the budget constraints. The best way to work within a tight budget is to plan around that budget. If you can't get everything you want now, you need to make a list and build your editing workstation slowly. Along the way you will be getting the latest versions, making your editing suite more robust. So why does Videomaker publish an editing workstation buyers guide? The gap between understanding how much of a computer system you need to properly edit video files, and successfully getting the editing program of your choice working at its best abilities is getting smaller every day.

For a video producer, there are a number of causes for confusion. When shopping at a big box retailer you will often get sales people that have little to no knowledge of your video editing needs. Are you editing large files? Shooting HD? Working with uncompressed footage? Will you be delving into 3D? The sales people can only rely on the system requirements for the editing software you will be using. This can lead to anger and frustration for the consumer. This happened recently to one of our readers who was lead astray by a salesman who knew nothing of video editing needs and tried to bluff his way into a sale. Our reader wanted to use Adobe Premiere Pro and was assured by the sales rep at an unnamed big box store that the computer she was interested in could do the job, no problem. Premiere Pro editing on a mini notebook?

Casual Shooter - Budget $2,500

This is the first price point and one where many of you will find yourself. At this level you need an editing machine that can fulfill all your editing needs. You also need this workstation to be scalable so you can make updates to it in the future. The Casual Shooters' needs will be editing videos from their camera as well as occasional high definition videos. They may also be interested in uploading videos to places like YouTube. As the Casual Shooter, you will need enough processing power to quickly handle encoding of these videos. While this price range seems like your choices would be limited they are not. An ADK 3800, for example, comes with a quad core Intel i7 CPU, three hard drives and a full-size case for future expansion as your budget allows. Your needs are at the beginning stage your software choices are Premiere Elements, the Sony Vegas editing software or Final Cut Express. These are all feature rich excellent editing software packages.

• CPU Speeds of at least 2.66 GHZ.
• Minimum of 2 gigabytes of RAM
• Choice of an Intel Core i5 or i7 processor.

• Dual Processors.
• Dual Video Cards for two monitor use

Serious Amateur - Budget $2,500 up to $5,000

At this level, you are working as a videographer at least on a part time basis. Your skills and equipment have grown, so should your editing equipment. The computer you choose to edit on will have more features and run a more robust program. Multiple higher end monitors can come in quite handy. You probably either have or are setting aside a dedicated room for editing. This means you can consider a full size or rack solution. You may not have big editing projects, but you need to have a machine that will not be slowed down by encoding or editing video. Processor speed as well as RAM are an imperative part of your system. Ample hard drive space is nice, but can be upgraded in the future when the budget calls for it. Multiple monitors is a nice luxury you may want to spring for.

The Alienware Aurora ALX comes with a quad core Intel i7, 6 gigabytes of RAM and dual video cards for under $3000. Leaving a lot of room in the budget for software and monitors.

• Multiple Fast Processors.
• 3 gigabytes of RAM to start.

• 6 gigabyte RAM range.
• Multiple hard drives.
• Multiple 1 gigabyte video cards to drive multiple monitors.