Legit Reviews

ok.. im going to set up my sister with a better video card for video editing.. they record movies from digital camcorder and recently aquired special effects software and all kinds of neat stuff..

the question i have for you all... which video card would you reccommend? im just too backed up with this SAN project im working on..

i have a personal preferance for nVidia but i dont completely rule out ATI. for the rest of everything im just gonna throw a buttload of ram and other basic stuff in there that doesn't matter all too much..

when your doing video editing anything that supports directdraw will do.. Its a common misconseption that you need a gaming card for doing video, even integrated graphics are fine for making videos (well minus the RAM hit) something cheap, with onboard memory of 64-128mb will be more than enough.

The video card only helps with 3d rendering (ie.e special effects in transitions). Even then you only really need a middle of the road card. Everything else is done by the CPU (1GB or more of RAM doesn't hurt!). The only way to shorten rendering times is by getting a faster and/or dual core CPU.

If you are not using Liquid Pro (approx. $1,000 piece of software/hardware), then what was said above is correct. The rules change with Liquid.
http://www.avid.com/products/liquidPro/specs.asp
The BreakOut Box actually causes the video card's GPU to do part of the rendering.

yes, as people have already mentioned the CPU actually is the main factor when comes to rendering. I think generally speaking intel is a tad better with the video rendering.

I am not sure, but I think ATI"s newest card comes with AVIVO feature and isn't it suppose to help out rendering videos as well? Not sure if it only helps when viewing it or it may help when converint video as well.

AVIVO will do hardware vidoe compression......but @ the moment the drivers don't allow you toi fine tune the bite rate etc.

A good video encoder will allow you to fine tune every aspect.

any video card will do.

I would suggest leaving the video and adding more RAM, hard drive space, or a faster cpu/multiple cpus.


I built 3 video editing computers in my life so far, all used Pinnacle hardwar encoding except my own that I used hauppauge and just plain firewire to import video to. you ned MASSIVE amounts of hard drive space..and at least 2 hard drives......1 for the video to reside on, and one that you can render to...trust me, it speeds up the rendering A TON!

Mike

those opinions expressed above are my own, and if you do not agree with them, then you are no longer on my Christmas card list hehehehe

sweet, i totally forgot about the hard drive.. i'll have to bump that up too..

the more i think about it i should either get her a Mac or a new rig just for this... she's going to be integrating alot of 3d special effects and weird stuff..

well if she is doing lots of 3D (maya, 3dstudio) then get her a highend Nvidia, most of thoes programs like OpenGL and nvidia is the OpenGL king, they spank ATI at it unless you go with the ATI Fire cards.

Videoguys provides DIY suggestions that you might want to look at for building your customer with a top-notch and proven system.
http://www.videoguys.com/DIY.html

Plus don't forget that Avid makes hardware that might do the job you are looking for:
http://www.avid.com/products/nlefamily.asp

Pesto wrote:sweet, i totally forgot about the hard drive.. i'll have to bump that up too..

the more i think about it i should either get her a Mac or a new rig just for this... she's going to be integrating alot of 3d special effects and weird stuff..

Yes, it's better to have the video data files on a drive separate from the OS drive.