Is a quad 2.5 GHz enough for HD?

[Jeff]

Iv’e been considering getting a new computer to edit on, and I’ve looked around, but I still have not found out the answer.

So what do you think, is a quad 2.5 GHZ Xeon enough to edit HD?

Thanks
Jeff

[Rob]

yea. make you’re got enough RAM and hard drive space too.

[NewBirthProductions]

If it’s a Mac it is, I know nothing about PC’s.

I would go with no less then 4 gigs of ram and at least one 1 Tb Drive. HD goes thru drive space like a teenager goes thru pizza. It’s not pretty :0

[Anonymous]

That’s not true..teenagers don’t eat pizzas THAT fast…
(chomp, chomp, chomp…HEY, WHERE IS MY PIZZA? *I could swear that it was here some seconds ago*)

OK..now, to the question..

I have a HP Media Center m8034n… It have a athlon X2 (Dual Core) of 2.4, with 3GB of RAM.. i edit my AVCHD footage in Sony Vegas Pro 8 without problems..so yeah.. i guess yours will work. =D

[aburke3]

Jeff,

Your question really depends on what flavor of HD video you need to edit.

From my experience, highly compressed video like HDV and AVCHD tend to require more from the computer CPU. The higher the GHz number, the better video editing experience we’ll have. Less-compressed video like DVCPRO or Uncompressed video tend to require more from the computer Hard Drives and Memory. Faster Hard Drives like 7,200 RPM and 10,000 RPM work best, along with a fast connection like FireWire800 and eSata are more helpful than having a fast CPU.

Happy Editing,

Andrew

[Ian]

Hi Jeff

I think it also depends upon the editing software you are using.

I am using an Intel Core 2 quad, 2.4GHz certainly not a Xeon. 3GB of RAM on Windows XP with two GeForce 8600 video card with 256MB of Ram and three monitors, one configured in Premier as a preview monitor. I have several 7200 RPM SATA hard drives, and have the operating system on one, assetts on another and export to a third.

I use Premier Pro 3 and edit HDV captured from tape through firewire. Premier Pro fully ulilises all four processors and renders multi layer video, (I have had up to 5 video tracks) at less than real time. It will also export to almost any other format in less than real time.

If I am using it for standard DV, I never have to bother rendering previews, although Premier says that transitions and multi layer stuff need rendering, the system plays them flawlessly with out rendering and compiles them on the fly. When exporting, it will do so often in half real time or less.

BUT!

I always:

Close down the network connection.
Stop the virus checker.
Only run the hard drives to about 50% capacity
Defrag or Format drives after big jobs.

[NewBirthProductions]

It has more to do with the ram then cpu, a 2.8 ghz with 4 gigs of ram will render faster then a 3.0 ghz with 2 gigs of ram.

[Anonymous]

Iv’e been considering getting a new computer to edit on, and I’ve looked around, but I still have not found out the answer. So what do you think, is a quad 2.5 GHZ Xeon enough to edit HD? Thanks
Jeff

Hi Jeff,

I am using an IBM T60p for all of my HD video edit and rendering. The T60p is only 2.0GHz duo core with 2 gig of ram. Video card is Fire GL V5200… I use Vegas PRO to edit and render…

You should be fine with a quad core… as others mentioned the RAM and video card also play a role in processing success.

Jeff B

[Author]

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