Best Computer System for editing

[bloomingg]

I’ve been using a PC set up “custom” built by this firm recommended by an editor about 5 years ago. I use Sony Vegas to edit.

I’m looking to upgrade now. I have a bit more money to spend. I am an avid amatuer – don’t sell anything, but make quite a few videos a year for friends and family, etc. I have 100’s of hours of video from the past 15 years.

Any recommendations on a computer configuration? I’m now open to Apple if it’s easier. I want to be able to store and retrieve all my hours of video as well. I have about 65,000 photographs as well. This will be a dedicated system.

Thanks for any help,

Tim

[pseudosafari]

If you like Vegas, then build with that in mind. I doubt it would be “easier” to switch to Apple now. No reason why you can’t stick with Vegas if it’s working for you. From what I remember, another member on here named Birdcat uses Vegas and just built a PC with that in mind. Check out that post.

[Daniel Bruns]

I agree with pseudosafari, if you have been using Vegas in the past, the simplest thing to do would be to buy a better PC from a company of your choice and use the program that you know. If you’d like to check out other good editing software, I would look at Adobe Production Premium as it has many industry-standard programs like Photoshop and After Effects.

If you do go with Adobe products or even Sony Vegas, it would be a good idea to buy at least 8 GB of RAM, and an NVIDIA graphics card like the Quadro or Geforce Series. NVIDIA graphics cards will give you the ability to speed up renders in Adobe applications and to get more real-time effects. Lastly, the speed of your hard drive is a definite concern if you plan to edit in HD. It’s good to have a hard drive with at least 7,200 RPM or higher – or better yet, a Solid State hard drive. These drives have incredibly fast read and write times which should help your playback be more responsive.

Hope that helps! I’m sure others might have more specific suggestions too 🙂

[birdcat]

As Pseudo said, I am building a new machine with Vegas Pro 11 in mind. I could have gone for some additional options (like a better video card) but we will start with these specs and see how it works.

• Core i7-2600K
• ASUS P8P67Pro motherboard
• 16 GB RAM
• Twin 7200 RPM SATA 6G 3 TB drives (one for OS & software, one for video)
• 5400 RPM SATA 3G 2TB drive (for other assets – graphics, music, etc…)
• EVGA GE 430 (96 Cuda cores)

Plus lots of other stuff – Hoping to get Win 7 Pro 64bit loaded today. I’ll post full specs and my impressions when I’m done.

[bloomingg]

Thank you Daniel and Birdcat. This is awesome.Looking forward the post installation comments. Let me know where I can find those? I think I’m leaning toward staying with Vegas now. Though I do use Photoshop and Lightroom (not very well trufully)

One of my biggest issues has been the system crashing or getting locked up. Is window’s better now? Or how best to avoid that?

Also, any suggestions on monitor? Or a Mini DV player to down load my videos?

Thanks again,

Tim

[Charles]

With windows you will always have crashing problems. I switched to a Mac this spring and I am not disappointed. I got the Mac Pro with two 2.64 Quad 12 gig of ram and 4 1.5 hard drives set up in raid configuration for about $4,000 from B & H Photo and I am very happy with it. I am not sure if Vegas will work on a Mac though.

[composite1]

“I am not sure if Vegas will work on a Mac though.”

Actually, it will if you go through all the trouble of partitioning your main drive and go through all of that ‘Bootcamp’ nonsense. I have colleagues who are die hard Vegas fans who are mac users and have it on their systems. Often though, they find the performance is much better on a dedicated Window’s editor. In fact, now long as all your hardware is mac compatible (which most of it is) you can partition your harddrive (if it’s FAT32) and put Snow Leopard on it (illegally of course.)

And you’ll only have ‘crashing problems’ with Windows if you don’t have the latest drivers for your programs or are not using hardware compatible with the spec’s recommended for your NLE. I’ve had AFX lock up on me on both win/mac systems and once we updated drivers for the usual culprits, ‘plug-ins’ we would be back up and running.

[michael9]

I thought about this a lot. If you want to work on stuff and take it around to show it a laptop seems like a good solution but typically their specs are too low for editing. I ended up buying an Acer Aspire 8950g. It’s a behemoth but runs 1080p on an 18.4″screen. Specs: i7 2630QM, Radeon 6850m and two 750Gb hdd’s. It copes well with anything I throw at it. The only thing I don’t like is the touchpad (I use a mouse instead) and the very glossy screen.

[JackWolcott]

The advice above is excellent. To it I would add the suggestion that you register on the Vegas Pro forum, search the archive for postings on computer configuration — there are dozens of them — and post your question there as well.

Jack

[talin]

As far as I know, MAC system is the best suitable option. But you can use PC as well. If you have modern PC you’ll don’t have any problems with it.

[videoeditmaker]

One IMPORTANT part of this whole process is the operating system. No one has mentioned this. In order to take advantage of the RAM suggested…..

Here’s the facts:

Windows Home Starter = 2GB

Windows Home Basic = 8GB

Windows Home Premium = 16GB

Windows Home Premium/Enterprise/Professional = 192GB

[Delano]

check out vegas pro 11 preview an specs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNdmhNFfClw

[bloomingg]

This is all great stuff! Thanks you everyone. I “think” I’m hearing:

– The most up to date PC, configured correctly should work just fine

– A Mac might be slightly better but is it worth my learning curve?

– I should look at the Vagas forum for more suggestions

I’d like to buy the system in the next week or so to do some work before the holidays. Any other suggestions, please let me know. Thanks again

Tim

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