Comments

JohnnyRoy wrote on 1/24/2005, 7:57 AM
While 64-bit is definitely the future, IMHO, it is in the distant future. No operating system or application software takes advantage of it yet and by the time it does, you’ll be ready for a faster processor upgrade again anyway. Right now the Intel P4 3.6 chips have a slight performance advantage for rendering over the 64-bit chips and so I would not make the leap to 64-bit just yet. (Dual Xeons are probably still the fastest configuration)

As for HDTV cards, Vegas outputs video for monitoring via firewire so these cards really don’t help you (i.e., Vegas won’t use them). Any good graphics card from Matrox, ATI, nVidia, etc. will do. Get an ADS Tech A/V Link or Canopus ADVC-100 (or similar device) to output video via firewire to the monitor of your choice.

What you want in a PC for HD is fast disk I/O. Consider an SATA RAID 0 configuration with plenty of space.

I’m sure others here who are actually doing HD will have other recommendations. (I’m not doing any HD yet)

~jr
randy-stewart wrote on 1/24/2005, 8:11 AM
VideoGuys just did another challenge with their technical guys on building a system for $2,000 that is HDV capable. Here's the link: http://www.videoguys.com/DIY2.html. The system looks awesome and the article is really informative. They are also doing another dual processor challenge that should be out soon. Hope this helps.
Randy
ibliss wrote on 1/24/2005, 8:53 AM
Quote from the article linked above:
"The card that I think Digital Videographers are going to fall in love with is the Quadro FX 540 card. It's a very reasonably prices 128 meg, dual head, OpenGL PCIe card that works great with all our NLE solutions. It's got an added little trick that I think is SO COOL! You can use a special adapter on the 2nd monitor output to provide Component video output that you can hook directly into an HiDef TV (Plasma, projection, LCD or CRT). You can download a plug-in drivers for After Effects & Premiere Pro that will allow you real-time HD previews while you are editing. Plug-ins for Vegas, Avid Xpress, Liquid Edition and other software is expected this spring. "

Not that I'm gonna be touch HD of any sort in the near future, but would it also allow better performance with 'regular' video stuff in Vegas?
busterkeaton wrote on 1/24/2005, 10:49 AM
I think Sony is going to be coming out with a HDV ready machine with Vegas installed on it later in 2005.

If I was looking for a beefy HDV capable machine, I would look at Boxx. link
They just came out a new line of affordable workstations. You can buy them with Vegas installed if you wish.


Not that I'm gonna be touch HD of any sort in the near future, but would it also allow better performance with 'regular' video stuff in Vegas?

I doubt it. The 128 megs will make sure your system is really snappy which is nice and you can drive two big monitors from it, but Vegas doesn't require much 3D power at all. Some NLE's do. I don't know how the new 3D in Vegas 5 track motion taxes the card, I think it's more the processor. If you work with Boris products, the graphics power will help. Also After Effects, I think.
Hulk wrote on 1/24/2005, 3:11 PM
I recently started a benchmark site for Vegas 5 here:
http://www.hyperactivemusic.com/msprofiles/sony%20vegas%205/sony_vegas_5_audio_benchmark.htm

Top of the line Intel and AMD systems seem to perform about the same with Vegas using SD video. I would expect HDV tests to show approximately the same results between AMD and Intel systems, but you never know for sure until testing...

I am planning on adding a HDV script to this benchmark site so we'll know for sure.

As for building a "HDV computer" that really means building a computer with a fast processor memory subsystem.

Vegas 5 has no support for 3D video acceleration. The amount of memory in your video card will do NOTHING for editing performance. Any video card manufactured in the last 5 years (or more) will perform almost identically with 2D raster work. So just get a video card that has good clean output and the features you want, i.e. dual head, DVI, etc...

Hard drives? Just about any 7200RPM hard drive, properly defragged and set to the secondary channel will be able to sustain 30MB/sec. That's enough for 3 streams encoded to the CineForm codec. More like 8 or 9 HDV streams. Believe me, you're going to run out of CPU before hard drive unless you plan on editing uncompressed HD.

So I'd be looking at a Socket 939 AMD chip or a P4 of at least 3.6GHz. The ONLY advantage to the AMD FX chips over the Socket 939 A64's is they are clock multiplier unlocked. If you're editing I assume your work is critical, therefore I don't recommend overclocking.

The P4 Prescotts require 915 or 925 motherboards while the nForce 3 is a good choice for AMD socket 939. Go for at least 1GB of memory.

Remember, fast CPU, fast motherboard, enough memory, and good 7200rpm hard drive not on the primary channel.

I've been running a Ulead MediaStudio Pro 7 benchmark site for about 4 years. All of my suggestions come from many, many reported test scores over the years.

Please, if you get a chance, run the test and submit your results. That's the ONLY way to really verify performance claims on the part of both software and hardware manufacturers.

I'm looking forward to seeing how various single and dual processor systems perform.

Good luck with your new system!

- Mark
Sunfox wrote on 1/24/2005, 9:43 PM
Later this spring I was planning on going for an Intel 925XE-based system with the P4EE 3.46GHz on a 1066 bus; 2 or 4 gigs of RAM; a 400 or 500gb primary SATA drive, plus two 400 or 500gb SATA drives in RAID 0 for streaming.

I was eyeing dual CPU Xeon systems, but can't find any hardware that would allow me to keep the system SILENT (I absolutely cannot work with grating fan noise from CPU fans or video cards).

I'm also keeping an eye on the new desktop boards supporting the Pentium-M - a 2.0ghz overclocked to 2.5ghz gives better performance than the 3.6ghz P4 in everything except memory bandwidth, but a new chipset coming this year adds dual channel DDR2 to the mix... only flaw is the few boards currently available are MATX and geared towards home theater PCs. And that you'd have to overclock. So just more of a curiosity value for now.
rmack350 wrote on 1/24/2005, 10:17 PM
Zalman has a water cooling tower that might work for the dual Xeons. It's supposed to be very quiet.

Rob Mack
Stonefield wrote on 1/24/2005, 10:37 PM
I just can't wrap my head around this....

We're now talking about what's the best configuration of a computer to edit high definition video....!!! And it's looking like it can be had for well under $3000.

I honestly thought we weren't gonna be here for at least another five years. These truly are exciting times to be living in for those of us who work with digital video.

Can't wait to see my model movies on HDV !!!

Stonefield
farss wrote on 1/25/2005, 1:45 AM
First, could I suggest investing in SPOTs HDV book, that answers a lot of your questions.
I don't know how the AspectHD codecs will work with the AMD chips, they do make use of the SSI instruction set so you'd need to see if they're also in the AMD chips.
One thing that I don't think SPOT mentions in the book. HiDef is right at the edge of what the DVI interface can handle. If you're planning on running a Vegas preview monitor at 1920x1200 you need to check out how well the video card is going to handle that.
Beyond that you don't need that much horsepower to handle HDV. In reality there's only two places in the whole video workflow where things get critical, capture and PTT. Neither of these require that much of the CPU normally but they do require data pipes that can keep up. DV and HDV aren't going to stress anything, in fact 10 bit 4:2:2 SD uses more bandwidth than HDV, that's why I'm buying a monster system but that's a different story.
Bob.
musman wrote on 1/25/2005, 3:26 AM
"... in fact 10 bit 4:2:2 SD uses more bandwidth than HDV, that's why I'm buying a monster system but that's a different story."

I'd certainly be curious about that system when you put it together. Would you mind posting your configuration when you do it? Thanks ahead of time!
farss wrote on 1/25/2005, 3:48 AM
Should be here in a few days.
SuperMicro mobo with dual Xeons @ 3GHz, 800Hz FSB
1 GB DDR2 RAM (sockets for 16GB)
120GB SATA system drive
2x200GB SATA drives in RAID 0 off HighPoint controller
NVIDIA Quadro FX 1300 16 x PCI-E
3 x firewire 800 ports
GBit LAN
Space for 8 drives in case I go to SCSI for uncomp HD
650 Watt power supply

These systems are built in Australia by XDT, main specialty Cineview, film grading systems and render farms. Should make Vegas run real smooth.
The've sold a few of these systems to drive quad HiDef displays for VR systems and flight simulators. You can fit two PCI-E video cards, anyone for Vegas over 4 screens?

Bob.
Sunfox wrote on 1/25/2005, 3:29 PM
I don't think editing HDV will be as "snappy" and high performance as DV for some years yet... and it'll be a combination of faster hardware and more efficient software that gets it there. Right now real-time editing of HDV is certainly doable, but not completely ideal.
Sunfox wrote on 1/25/2005, 3:36 PM
Never been pleased with the idea of water around a PC. :-) But at any rate it doesn't seem to indicate compatibility with S603/604s.
musman wrote on 1/25/2005, 3:56 PM
Thanks for sharing that. It sounds like a hell of a system. Can you actually take advantage of the fw 800, or will it be slowed to 400? Would be nice to have the option for portable G-raid or LaCie fw 800 drives.
Also, would you need SCSI for HiDef? I thought SATA drives in a RAID would do the trick.
Thanks for sharing, it sounds great!
busterkeaton wrote on 1/25/2005, 4:43 PM
First thing to wrap your head around is HDV is not HD.

Yes, HDV seem like it will be a genuine revolution in its own right, but it's not HD.
Sunfox wrote on 1/26/2005, 2:00 PM
Now, if Zalman would create a version of their CNPS7000 for dual Xeon systems, I'd be a happy camper. :-)
Hulk wrote on 1/26/2005, 2:43 PM
That system looks really strong. You've picked out some great components. Any switches would really be personal preference. Since you asked, here's what I would change.

The FX55 is $1000. I have a hard time paying for the latest greatest. I would probably go for the 3500+ socket 939, giving up 400MHz and the ability to adjust clock multipliers but saving over $700. I would also strongly consider the socket 754 3400+, which is a 2.4GHz cpu. It appears that the dual memory channel controller of the socket 939 cpus may provide very little performance boost in Vegas (verdict not in yet though). The 3400+ can be had for about $200. Then again the socket 939 3500+ would give a nice upgrade path.

I'd get the new Matrox APVe PCI-E video card. Dual DVI plus HDTV out.

Either way that's going to be a killer system!

Nice choices.

Mark
farss wrote on 1/26/2005, 2:51 PM
For HDV no need for anything beyond SATA 7200 or even IDE 7200, anything that'll work for DV should be fine for HDV.
However our plan is to go out to 4:2:2 SD and hopefully when Vegas catches up to do it in 10bit, that pushes the throughput requirements up quite a bit but even then SATA RAID 0 will cover it.
But we're also looking at 1080 HiDef uncompressed or with HDCAM compression out to HDCAM. That's when the throughput requirements go thru the roof.
Bob.