Budget news-cutting PC

funkytwig wrote on 1/5/2015, 5:18 PM
Hi, I really hate to ask this because I know the problems all too well with trying to edit on underspeced computers but I am involved with a community organisation who want to get a used PC for editing with Vages. The computer will be used for editing relatively simple news type videos. The issue it that people will be shooting stuff on a variety of camcorders and DSLRs. This will include AVCHD footage.

I came across this for pinnacle studio, The Vegas specs are fairly vague:

"Intel® Core™2 Duo 2.66 GHz, Intel® Core™ i5 or i7 1.06 GHz or higher required for AVCHD™, stereoscopic 3D & Intel® Quick Sync Video support...2 GB of RAM or higher, min. 4 GB for Windows® 64-bit (strongly recommended for stereoscopic 3D)

Would a similar PC work for Vegas 12. Would a i3 be OK. Droping the playback rez would not be a big issue.

Ben

Comments

Chienworks wrote on 1/5/2015, 5:25 PM
I edit AVCHD on a 7 year old Q6600. Yeah, it's not snappy, but it works and i get the job done.

The $550 laptop i got last month has a dual-core i5 and it runs Vegas about 20 times faster. So, no, you don't have to spend a lot of money.
john_dennis wrote on 1/5/2015, 7:05 PM
A budget number would help us.

My old Q9450-based system with a GTS-450 does OK.
pilsburypie wrote on 1/6/2015, 4:07 AM
Caveat: I am no PC guru!

The minimum specs are what it will run. Start throwing compressed HD video at it and it will be slow. Timelines will play jittery and rendering will take a long time. But it will work. My old Dell Q6600 machine did a reasonable job of editing my 1080 50p AVCHD footage when I first got my HD camera. As I started adding effects and corrections it slowed it down hard. I soon felt the need to spend a fair amount on an i7 overclocked at 4.5Ghz so things worked nice and smooth. I am no pro and have no timescales, it just took the pleasure out of my editing seeing the computer stutter and stammer it's way through.

JohnnyRoy wrote on 1/6/2015, 5:50 AM
> "Would a i3 be OK. Droping the playback rez would not be a big issue."

Not likely. Core i3's are for web surfing and word processing. The minimum for video editing on a PC would be a Core i5. Stay away for older Core 2 Duo technology.

~jr
TheHappyFriar wrote on 1/6/2015, 8:30 AM
The best way to get a speed increase here is to use a different video format. IE convert it all to something like HDV/images sequences & audio files/etc. AVCHD is a horrible format to edit and I avoid it if possible. I edit HDV on an "old" Phenom 9600 and it runs great. I don't need GPU accell & what not, because the format it easy to edit. I used to edit AVI-Mpeg-2 (from an ATI AIW card) on a computer I built for a TV station on a single core machine. It would edit great (and render pretty fast).

If you can get away from AVCHD, any of the higher end duel core AMD or 3/4+ core AMD's or the quad+ core intels should be good.
Chienworks wrote on 1/6/2015, 9:32 AM
I usually convert larger AVCHD projects into MXF. That works very nicely and much smoother. No, not much, make that incredibly smoother.
Laurence wrote on 1/7/2015, 4:12 PM
I remember stretching a core 2 duo laptop well past it's prime. It seemed to work fine with easy formats like HDcam mxf. Other formats bogged it down considerably more.

Not only did I recode all my video to XDcam mxf, but I also color corrected on that pass. The reason being that Vegas on a slow computer will bog down with a color correction filter added. This meant extra time at the front-end color correcting and rerendering, but I made up for some of this by smart-rendering HDcam mxf or mp4 for my finished product.
astar wrote on 1/8/2015, 8:17 PM
I would say pretty much any i5 or i7 rig with 8-16GB of ram will edit xdcam.mxf just fine. Machines with that class of CPU, will normally have the video device to drive the editing with no GPU acceleration just fine. I used to run VP13 on a Lenovo T410 (i5 w 8GB ram, and a WD dual drive) just fine. Speed of output back to .mp4 is where you start to see CPU/GPU power come into play.