The Desk Top Video Handbook On Line ver 15.9
Videoguys' System recommendations for Video Editing (Nov 2007)

We highly recommend both Intel's P4 Dual-Core and AMD Dual- Core processors.
In the past we would recommend Intel over AMD for compatability reasons. This is no longer the case. For almost all of our hardware and softeare you will get great results, and the system build will be just as simple with either a P4 Dual-Core or AMD Dual Core processor.

• Chipsets are as important as the CPUs.
  This is all too often overlooked, but in reality it is the single most important factor in the success of your computer for NLE. Picking the correct motherboard is critical. Any bottlenecks in the chipset can be a huge problem for NLEs. We discovered this with the 6300 southbridge while researching our DIY 3 dual core workstation.
  
  
• Specific NLE solutions may require specific motherboards
  We can't stress this enough. The guideline on this page are GENERAL guidelines. Many times our vendors will recommned specific motherboards or chipsets for integrating their NLE solutions. If you have any specific questions about hardware and/or software you plan on purchasing from us, we urge you to give us a call 800 323-2325 and review your planned configuration. This is especiallty important if you intend to edit HDV, DVCProHD or Uncompressed HD footage.
  
• Picking the right graphics card for your NLE workstation
  One of the most often asked questions we get asked on our tech support and sales lines (as well as in emails, online forums and user groups) is what is the best graphics card for NLE. The answer is actually pretty simple, once you understand why. It all depends on the NLE software you plan on running, what kind of video work you do and if you are also going to be using any additional hardware in your system. Check out our DIY- GPU : Picking the right graphics card for your NLE workstation article.
  
• General system recommendations (Nov 2006):
  If you are starting from scratch, build a dual-core machine w/ 2 full GBs of Dual Channel RAM (2 x 1GB) , a 160GB SATA drive and a 256+ meg ATI or nVidia based graphics card that supports dual monitors. Add in a second 250+ GB SATA drive for your storage - even better, set up a RAID 0 striped set (2x250GB).

* Get at least 2 full gigs of top-notch memory.
For best results get a motherboard that supports dual channel memory and make sure you use two 1GB ( or bigger) sticks of RAM. We did some research and discovered that ideally the memory speed should be equal to ½ the front side bus speed. If your motherboard has a front side bus speed of 800 Mhz, go with 400 Mhz memory.

** Why we recommend a dual head graphics cards
It's all about real-estate. With two monitors you can stretch your timeline across the bottom of both screens and you can have more windows open at the same time. This means you spend less time opening and closing windows or scrolling throught the timeline. As a result, you are more productive. Premiere, Xpress DV & Edition all have optimized preset screen layouts for dual monitors.

We recommend nVidia Quadro based graphic cards for video editing because of their superb OpenGL support. Pinnacle Liquid , Adobe After FX, Avid Xpress Pro, Red Giant Magic Bullet & Boris FX all take advantage of OpenGL. You will see more and more video editing software take advantage of OpenGL GPU power as new versions of NLEs get released. This is the key the reason why we recommend Quadro cards over less expensive 3D gaming cards. While you can do fine with a 3D gaming card, Quadro cards are designed and engineered for this kind of work - and the NLE engineers are optimizing their applications to take advantage of this GPU OpenGL power.

*** Video Storage recommendations
With todays powerful processors, lightening fast memory, super 3D graphics cards and huge ATA hard drives you can capture, edit & playback single stream DV video with your system drive. That said, we still urge you to get a dedicated hard drive (7200 RPM or faster) for all your video clips. This will produce the best results - especially for video projects over 1 hour in length. If you are going to be using one of our Real-Time NLE solutions then we still recommend a dedicated SATA Raid or SCSI for best results.

We recommend Serial ATA (SATA) drives for NLE. While these drives do have a cost premium, the improved sustained data throughput is worth it. We also like the new cables which allow for better air flow inside your computer case. We have not yet had the chance to test any SATA Raid controllers, but we're confident that they will work great with our software based NLE solutions. RAIDs are great! For the best results set up a dedicated RAID 0 stripe for your video & media files. This will give you a huge capacity with the fastest possible sustained throughput for your editing.

RAID Warning! We do NOT recommend setting up your computer with a single RAID 0 array as your boot drive and video storage. This will actually give you poor performance for video editing. The constant reading and writing of small bits of data to the boot drive works against the need to read & write large continuous video files. Add in the overhead of the RAID controller and you get potential bottlenecks. For video editing you always want to have a dedicated drive or RAID array for your video files.

NEW TECHNOLOGY NEWS! (Nov 2007 )

Back in the end of 2005 we realized that our first two DIY projects had gotten pretty long in the tooth. While they were pretty cutting edge at the time, we were seeing some very new and exciting technologies breaking out. The most exciting was dual core processors.

The advantages of Dual Core processors for video editing are significant.
The biggest is price / performance. Most video editing applications are written to take advantage of dual processors and hyperthreading, now with a single affordable chip, you can maximize this capability.

Back in May of 2006 we did our first ever head-to-head DIY article. In DIY4 we built and tested two different machines using the latest and greatest (at the time) dual-core processors. (For more information on dual-core processors and why they are important for NLE, please read our DIY4 article before continuing with this article) 

It was AMD vs Intel, winner takes all – and the winner was AMD. We were pretty surprised by this, AMD beat Intel across the board, in every test and benchmark. Although AMD was the clear winner, we knew even back then that Intel had a not-so-secret weapon on the horizon. A new killer CPU that would destroy all other benchmark tests and once again establish Intel as the dominant force in NLE workstations. Check out our DIY5 article – and then our DIY5 Update for the very best advice on building your NLE workstation

Quad-Core - What's the story?

If dual core machines are great, then logic would tell us that a Quad-core should be even better! While we do agree with this from a pure CPU power point of view, we can't recommend quad-cores over dua- cores because of the cost premium. If your video work involves a lot of encoding (either for Blu-ray, Standard def DVD, Flash, or other web streaming video formats) then a quad-core is definitely something you should consider. While the current generation of NLEs do not take full advantage of 4 cores, the latest encoding softwares do - including the encoders built into or bundled with your NLE.

Windows Vista – Not yet – still waiting for 64 bit drivers.

While Microsoft has been shipping their much awaited and hyped Vista OS for almost a year we still can't recommend it. We have yet to see any benefit to using the 32 bit version of Vista over WinXP for video editing. In fact, many of the graphical features of the OS hog resources and can have a negative impact on your systems video editing performance. For Digital Videographers we have one piece of advice: Do Not Upgrade (Yet) 

Here are our top reasons why we feel you MUST WAIT before upgrading or migrating to Vista 

1. Wait for certified Vista 64 bit drivers for your software and hardware. We see no reason or advantage at all for upgrading to the 32 bit version of Vista. It eats up resources and at best you will get the same performance you already have under WinXP. Once we have 64bit software and drivers to offer you, we will begin recommending Vista
2. Vista has too many flavors, and we have no idea which one will offer the best value and performance for video editing. You don’t want to have to upgrade to a more expensive version in a few months, and you don’t want to overpay for the more expensive flavors if you don’t need it.
3. Vista, video cards and graphics drivers. One of the coolest new features about Vista is the Aero display technology that allow you to see and work with multiple windows in 3D space. Very cool! But what will that do for video editing? I’m concerned it will steal resources and slow us down. We recommend waiting until we can recommend the right optimized graphics drivers and settings for you.

We had hoped that by this time (Nov 2007) we would have Service Packs that have been released so we would change our tune. Unfortuantley this has not been the case. In addition the NLE vendors are taking a slow and deliberate path to Vista. We will contnue to wait for Vista certified versions of our software that also include some demonstrable benefits or improved features gained by using Vista over WinXP. I still don’t think you’ll see us giving it our top recommendation until it can deliver on the full promise of 64 bit computing. Then there will be no turning back.

Down the road Vista will allow us to take full advantage of multiple CPU cores, utilization of 4,6,8 or more GBs of RAM and even multiple graphic cards running multiple HD displays. Eventually we’ll see new NLE software GUIs and interfaces that tap into the Aero technology to make editing even easier and more productive. We’re just not there yet. Give it time. Perhaps by the summer of 2008 we’ll have it all – and more!!

64 bit is the future - but it is not here yet for NLE.

We are extremely excited about multi-core processors and 64 bit operating system. These cutting edge new technologies are going to be very beneficial for video editing. The increased processing power will make rendering and encoding much faster and enable additional features. We also expect to see video editing software and hardware that will be fully optimized for these new technologies to deliver a whole new level of real-time features and performance.

As we move to HD this additional processing power will become even more important. A 1080i HDV file actually contains 5 times the data of a standard DV file. While this data can be packed into a stream the same size as a DV file, when it comes time to process and edit the video, you need to be able to handle all the additional bits of data. I am certain that in the not to distant future we will be recommending multi-core processors and WinXP64 OS / Vista - but not yet.

While these machines are now becoming available, we're urging our customers to use caution here. None of our video editing solutions is written for Windows XP64, and we do not yet have enough real-world feedback to tell you what if any issues are cropping up. While in theory you should be able to run 32 bit applications under XP64, we do not know what kind of trouble that may cause for video editing. To take full advantage of this next technology leap we are going to need NLE software (and hardware) that is optimized for winXP64 and multicore processors as well.

Over the next several months we will be compiling tips and tweaks pages for the new 64 bit version of Windows XP and we will be putting up a page on our website for them.

Apple Macs on Intel processors = AWESOME!!

That's right, the new generation of Apple computers are built on Intel Dual (and now Quad) core processors. While this may have caused some initial apprehension in loyal Mac users, the results are in and these systems are FANTASTIC! Best of all Mac users now have several great choices in Video Editing software they can choose from: Apple Final Cut Studio 2 with Final Cut Pro, Adobe Production Premium CS3 with Premiere Pro and Avid Xpress Pro 5.7 or Media Composer 5.7.

While you can't build your own Mac for video editing, you can find Apple Certified Video VARs who can customize your Mac for you. Even cooler - Did you know you can use "Boot Camp" to run both Mac OSX and WinXP on the same computer. Thereby enabling Mac customers to finally be able to take advantage of software that is Windows only, and vice-versa!

1. We recommend getting Win XP Pro.Win XP Home is fine for home video / hobbiest work. XP Pro is better for serious NLE work. It supports dual processors, Hyperthreading and networking.
2. With a WinXP system, the more power you give it, the more powerful your NLE system will be.
3. WinXP will take full advantage of CPU speed and Win XP Pro fully supports dual processors. For best results give WinXP at least an 1.4Mhz CPU or dual 1 Ghz. You will find that you can get a dual P4 1.8Ghz computer for about the same cost as a single P4 2.4 Mhz. Almost all of our NLE software now utilize both processors and so can many of our other content creation software.
4. WinXP demands a lot of memory, so go with a minimum of 512 Megs. 768 or 1GB is MUCH BETTER!
5. All the hardware in your computer must have WinXP driver support for our WinXP cards to function properly.
6. We do not recommend upgrading an existing and working system to WinXP.
7. For all these reasons we feel you are much better getting a new system with WinXP rather then upgrading an older system that may not have the necessary power and/or driver support.
8. We now have some excellent WinXP tips!! check out our fantastic WinXPTweaks!

More System recommendations

Get lots of RAM. You want Minimum 1GB of RAM just to run WinXP efficiently. For video editing you want at least 2GB! Memory is still very cheap, and this is a great performance booster. While you can run with less, you will have a much more stable & better running system with more memory. Also, with the new chipsets, the new faster RAM is one of the biggest contributors to improved performance. By running less then 1GB on a new computer system, you are actually throttling down your overall system's performance.

Multiple Layers of Vdeo, Animation and Special FX need even more RAM.
If you plan on adding a lot, get at least 2GB , you won't regret it. If you plan on using a 3D effects plug-in or compositing your video with multiple layers, you'll find your system runs smoother and faster w/ 2 GBs of RAM!