Upgrading a system for Pr and AE questions « Videomaker Community Forums

Jorden Mosley
Member

I'm planning to build a new computer dedicated to editing footage from Cannon DSLRs and RED in Premiere and After Effects. The system I'm currently running has:

6GB of DDR2 SDRAM 800

Radeon HD 4850 X2 2GB 512-bit

Phenom II x4 940

640gb Firewire 400 Enclosure case sata drive

2 1TB hard drives (one for OP and the other for production programs).

Windows Vista Ultimate 64bit OP

My current system runs okay with the footage and programs. But I'm looking for a decreased render time, faster importing/conforming, and longer/better quality playback previews.

Since I'm starting out completely fresh, I have a few questions:

Is there a maximum amount of CPU cores and RAM that Premiere CS5.5 and AE CS5.5 can utilize?

Would building a dual socket server computer for editing be as good as buying a Mac Pro?

Would having a ATI dual gaming graphics card be a suitable substitute for a workstation card?

More impact in terms of editing: More RAM or Faster RAM speed?

And finally, would having the OP and production software installed on two separate Solid State or VelociRaptor drives (while using a Firewire 800 drive for scratch disk) decrease load/import times?

Posted 9 months ago #
tylerknight
Member

First things first that setup is basically the same as the one i am currently using. I have 8gb of ram though and have smaller but more drives for my data.

first problem i see with your setup, is you have 2 separate hard drives for your os programs and editing programs. this actually slows down your computer. Ideally what you should do is have a small drive like say 250gb for your os and programs ( editing programs included) and then have a separate drive for your raw video files and project files on one, media cache on another, exports for a third and finally a large drive to put backups onto as well as a secondary external for a 2nd backup.

definitely if you have the option, go solid state for your raw video as the write speed will be greatly improved, as for exporting and rendering this will speed it up noticeably. everything else can just be regular drives and maybe after each project just move it from the video drive, to your 2 backup 1 terabyte drives. Hope this helps

Posted 9 months ago #
Jorden Mosley
Member

Oh wow, thanks for the tips. I now have a more well informed game plan to go with!

Posted 9 months ago #
tylerknight
Member

Hey no problem man! There's a great Adobe post that I found showing proper disk layout

http://forums.adobe.com/thread/662972

should help you get everything setup to get the most out of your system without spending too much! Just remember you don't need a huge system drive and same with video drive, the more you have on there the slower the drive becomes so just use the video drive for a project, then move the files to your 2 backup drives and be done with it.

Posted 8 months ago #
Charles Schultz
Adobe Host

If you really want faster render times you would want 2 1.5tb set in a raid configuration of 0.0 that way you are writing to the drives intermittently. Basically while one is writing the other is getting information to write, speeds things up quite nicely. Personally, I would not kick a Mac Pro to the side as to what really kills speed on a PC is the operating system. If you are sticking with a PC get as many processors as you can, CS5.5 will use whatever it can and will render farm the other CPUS above 2. And above all else, get your motherboard with as many ram slots as possible. You may want to ask Composite1 as his company builds all their PC's, he may be able to give you some pointers. I have to tell you that I switched to a Mac recently and will never go back to a PC as long as they make Macs, BHPhotoVideo.com has some pretty impressive deals on them.

Posted 8 months ago #
Charles Schultz
Adobe Host

You will have to have at least 2 250gb Op drives and the other 2 are 1.5, You will need a raid card for a PC.

Posted 8 months ago #