So my brother is really big into making movies. He's 18 and already has made around 10 short films. He's going off to college in a few months and my parents gave me a budget of around $800 so i could build him a pc. I've built 2 PC's in my life so i have some experience. However, i have no idea what to get for his specific needs. I mainly play games on my PC and ive never really done any editing myself.
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He's been working on an old HP with 2GB of ram and a Celeron (yuck). Most of his films have been edited with WMM, which i know isn't the best program. So what i want to do is put together a well rounded machine for under 800. He already has a monitor and stuff, and ive got an extra copy of Windows. I live in the US so parts are easy to get. PC Partpicker lists work best. Thanks so much!
Also any software suggestions that he could use to edit with on the new machine? Cheers!
You could look into all the Tek Syndicate sub $800 gaming PC builds. I'm sure the specs for an editing machine would be similar, maybe just alternate CPU/ GPU. That would give you a solid baseline to work with as well. I don't know of any software for editing though..
So the primary need of video editing machines is going to be a decent amount of processing power during editing and rendering, and a decent amount of RAM for keeping all of that (preferably HD) video on tap during editing.
Graphical power isn't as much of a concern unless he's going to be doing any sort of 3D work. So that's probably the part that will get skimped on compared to a lot of the gaming builds you'll see on here.
For sharing build specs with people and online, I like to use PC Part Picker however I wouldn't advise actually purchasing all of it from the actual parts list as much of it can be found cheaper, and it's generally completely fine purchasing parts second hand to save money.
For my build I chose to do something similar to what I'm actually using right now. Although I've gone over a little on the first budget, I think it's completely possible to save more than that by sourcing from places such as eBay.
I went with the H61-1155 platform because it's still super powerful while the prices have come down a lot. I also went Mini-ITX as well, which a lot of people will probably advise against, but it's the same case I'm using and can say that it's super expandable in about every way, while also being super easy to move around which may be crucial in college as far as moving in and out of dorms or apartments every year.
I went with non-overclockable hardware simply because it not as easy to do in the form factor, however I threw a water cooler in so that the processor won't become too hot during rendering.
Here is an AMD centric build since from my experience, more cores at a high clock speed is much better for rendering out video. http://pcpartpicker.com/user/LinuxMaster9/saved/rrnwrH
The OS of course is Ubuntu Linux and the Video Editing Software is Lightworks (http://www.lwks.com/)which for all but the Movie Studios is free (aka only professional studios like Pixar would need these features). The 2 2TB Red Drives are meant for NAS setups and have 3 year warranties on them and 64mb caches. Set them in RAID 1 for redundancy. I included an inexpensive SSD for the OS and software which will work just fine.
the GPU is Nvidia incase the CUDA cores can be used. (unsure, I don't run Nvidia). AMD FX 8350 (self explanatory. 8 Cores at 4Ghz.) I used to video edit as a Broadcasting major with an FX 8120 and it was just fine. 16GB of RAM for the processing. the case and PSU were inexpensive but had good ratings and build quality. the Stock CPU cooler is fine for now unless you OC the 8350. Then a simple 20 or 30 $ cooler is fine.
PCPartPicker part list: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/jWMF3C Price breakdown by merchant: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/jWMF3C/by_merchant/
CPU: AMD FX-8350 4.0GHz 8-Core Processor ($179.99 @ Newegg) Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-970A-UD3P ATX AM3+ Motherboard ($96.98 @ Newegg) Memory: Team Elite Plus 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($119.99 @ Newegg) Storage: Sandisk ReadyCache 32GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($45.98 @ Newegg) Storage: Western Digital Red 2TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive ($95.79 @ Amazon) Storage: Western Digital Red 2TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive ($95.79 @ Amazon) Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 750 Ti 2GB Superclocked Video Card ($119.99 @ Newegg) Case: Antec GX500 ILLUSION ATX Mid Tower Case ($34.99 @ Newegg) Power Supply: Corsair CX 430W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply ($29.99 @ Newegg) Total: $806.49 Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-01-14 23:46 EST-0500
Cheapest NLE I'd recommend is Sony Vegas Pro, its clunky and the UI is cringe worthy but it gets the job done. A nicer NLE would be Premiere Pro CS6; one time price, not that old, and its industry level. If you can manage it a student subscription of Premiere Pro CC 2014, welcome to the fast lane.
As for build recommendations this is a few dollars over budget but it fits the bill: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/Zn3RRB
Intel CPUs as they have access to some instruction sets that NLEs use to speed things up.
SDD for OS, HDD for media, if you have an extra HDD laying around format it and toss it in as a cache drive for your editor to write to when preview eat up most of the ram.
2GB GPU is enough for 1080 video and shouldn't have much of a problem helping generate previews or pushing filters.
Case with enough drive bays for the onboard SATAs, they'll get filled up as time goes on.
You could skimp on the ram if you'd like, I just find 1600/CAS 9 to be a nice balance of speed and price.
I wouldn't recommend Lightworks just because its free. Its interface is chaotic and unintuitive making workflow not only cumbersome but creates skills that cannot be transposed into other NLEs, which is important when collaborating with others. In addition, the free version locks out features which should be common place (eg 1080 export.) Lightworks may have its niche, but in comparison to other NLEs it lacks.
That is 1080p Youtube export. not 1080p export in general. And Lightworks is not chaotic. I come from a history of using Avid and Final Cut Pro. Lightworks is easier to pick up and use than those 2 products. Plus, You can take skills from Lightworks and go to Final Cut or Avid.
Wow! I didn't expect this many responses. Some quick questions for all of you guys.
1. I have an Intel machine, always have, Would I see any noticable differences in performance on the AMD side? 2. BlueKoda mentioned eBay parts? Anyone have experience on buying used hardware?
For rendering with Mutli-threaded applications, yes. Definitely yes. Intel has only just gotten into the 8 core market and you have to spend +$1k to get one. Sure intel has a higher IPC but AMD has the higher physical core count and when it comes to rendering, Hyperthreading aint gonna cut it. Physical cores always trumps virtual (fake) cores. Video rendering, 3D model rendering, photo rendering, etc is drastically improved using an AMD 8 core Monster. Make sure the RAM is sufficient. 16+ GB. AMD also makes excellent use of higher clocked RAM unlike Intel where you could easily use 1333Mhz RAM for the entire life of the PC.