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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

BEST over the counter Windows PC ??

George D.

George D.

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Once I get the Scarlet, or Red-One, I want to store the data onto external hard drives, then later "rough" edit the footage on a new PC which will NOT be hooked up to the internet. It will be used exclusively for the digital film data and editing.

Is there an "over-the-counter" brand and model of PC that can handle this kind of workload? I hope to use Adobe Premier for editing.

I have been considering having the computer custom built.

This will be the very first time I've entered into the realm of digital editing on a PC, so I want to do it right. I will NOT be doing any "fine" editing, and with titles, music, etc., just a rough collection of shots.

What would be a brand and model of external hard drives that could accommodate this storage too?

Thanks ahead of time.
 
Hey George,

simple answer: don't!
I bought a Quadcore PC last summer, great bargain. HP... Great for was it was made but now that I begin to upgrade my system it's a nuissance. Mainboard is missing something, not enough room in the case for additional hard drives etc etc.
My suggestion: go to a PC-builder, tell him your budget and that you want to upgrade the system when you've earned your first money with it. A great mainboard is always a good start. Even if it is just for rough editing. Just my 2c.
 
Thanks Felix, that's what I was thinking might be the best answer too. According to what I've learned, I will need the following:

G5 Computer with 4 Gigs Ram or more.* 6 is better.
16 Raid 7TB Hard Drive 600MB/Sec
Monitor
Blackmagic Multibridge PCI card
5.1 Monitor System
64 bit color
 
I just built a nice enough machine for working with footage. It runs beautifully.

Asus P6X58D motherboard
i7 930 quad 2.8Ghz (with a view to tweat clock speed later).
VelociRaptor 150GB (10,000rpm) boot drive
12GB Corsair Dominator 1600Mhz DDR3 RAM
Corsair H50 Water cooling
Antec 902 case
Corsair TX850w PSU
GTX 285 Graphics card (until this whole NVIDIA debaucle sorts itself out).
Dell U2410 24" primary monitor.

Havent gone into the RAID set up yet as Scarlet isn't out and I just use this for playing around with. Heavy workload stuff is done in the office. Which is still Avid dominated.
 
rough editing? titles, music are the most basic form of editing. Do you plan on cutting the clips in the sequence onto a timeline and moving over to another computer to do the fine editing? Are you planning on doing color grading? What kind of projects are you shooting? Il tell you right now, Save yourself massive amounts of trouble and DONT buy a pc over the counter. Unless you are ordering a workstation from dell or hp. but dont walk into best buy and tell them you need a computer to edit and compile 4k raw footage. They dont have a clue. You should walk into your local computer shop and since ur not sure about building one yourself ask them to build one for you. Tim Hole has some very good specs which will be fantastic for editing scarlet footage. 90% of his specs are the exact same as the computer i built for scarlet editing last week. frankly george it sounds like you are getting in over your head. What does 16 raid 7tb hard drive mean. You absolutly do not need 7 tb of hard drive space unless you never plan on deleting files. 6 or more gb of ram is a MUST. I must ask though, a scarlet or red one???? Big difference there. which scarlet are you refering to? 64bit color???? what are u talking about? 5.1 monitor system??? have you owned any previous cameras leading up to the purchase of red?
 
HP makes great top of the line workstations.

Be sure the video card will work with Adobe's Mercury playback engine, otherwise you've justed wasted yourself a lot money buying a highend machine.
 
When you are ready to make a purchase I would DEFINITELY ask around like you are now to get a system someone else has working that is a proven combination with the software/external hardware you want to use.

I say this because, while not in the video realm, in the audio realm I spent A LOT of money building a studio machine with some of the best parts I could find about 9 years ago. Everything on paper looked great, till I started recording. This particular computer worked GREAT for almost all applications EXCEPT high throughput PCI communications. The motherboard burst rate AND packet size were too small for ALL audio interfaces. Needless to say, I really didn't even thing about this.

Finding the right motherboard is important, especially with regards to CS5 if you are going to use that Mercury engine. Finding the best video card for CS5 and a motherboard that goes well with it would be my first step. Secondly, HD throughput in whatever method you chose. For instance, not all add-on FireWire cards perform equally as well from both a speed and reliability standpoint.

Once you go through all that and nail all that down, you should be able to put together a nice machine.

In the end, I switched to the Mac Pro. This is NOT a Mac/PC argument, as what tool you are comfortable with is the best. This is a Mac Pro versus off the shelf PC argument. I really wish the PC world would not just focus on gaming rigs and servers and actually optimize some heavy duty machines for video. I have seen audio machines though that get great reviews. But, I fear those machines will be in the same ball park as a Mac Pro at that point which will steer people to cheaper hand built machines.
 
Thanks Jeremy, but all I want to do is what I said.
I want to be able to put scenes together in a preferred order, and save them that way. Then be able to reduce the quality and put that on a disc or external hard drive, for viewing by a third party. That's it.
 
Rick Burnett said:
... This is NOT a Mac/PC argument, as what tool you are comfortable with is the best. This is a Mac Pro versus off the shelf PC argument. I really wish the PC world would not just focus on gaming rigs and servers and actually optimize some heavy duty machines for video. ...
Click to expand...

Rick, Actually Windows has probably superior top-end video capabilities to those of the Mac. Look at the quality of nVIDIA videocard you can get for PC versus a Mac.

There is no deficiency w/ how Windows can handle video. Rather, it's that there are a lot of Windows PC's not configured well for video editing. Blame that on too many choices and combinations, not the OS or the excellent components that are available.
 
Just curious I'm a Mac/Windows user myself but I have never done any video/film work on a Windows OS. Has anyone done any film workflow on Mac hardware running Windows?

Z
 
George D. said:
Thanks Felix, that's what I was thinking might be the best answer too. According to what I've learned, I will need the following:

G5 Computer with 4 Gigs Ram or more.* 6 is better.
16 Raid 7TB Hard Drive 600MB/Sec
Monitor
Blackmagic Multibridge PCI card
5.1 Monitor System
64 bit color
Click to expand...

I don't want to be rude or anything, but those specs don't make a whole lot of sense. You really don't want a G5 but something more current. The Apple G5's were retired in 2006...

An 8 drive RAID will fit into some enclosures, but 16 drives is an external RAID case. As a matter of fact if you'll be editing RED Raw you won't even need the speed because the datarates are not that high...

Why would you need 5.1 audio monitoring for simple rough cuts? Are you going to be doing surround mixes on the system?

I'd just go with a Core i7 CPU with 6 or 12 GB RAM, and a good gaming graphics card. HP workstations are great machines for this. Towards the higher end BOXX is excellent.

Anyway - I'm not really able to make much sense of your specs.
 
Peter Moretti said:
Rick, Actually Windows has probably superior top-end video capabilities to those of the Mac. Look at the quality of nVIDIA videocard you can get for PC versus a Mac.

There is no deficiency w/ how Windows can handle video. Rather, it's that there are a lot of Windows PC's not configured well for video editing. Blame that on too many choices and combinations, not the OS or the excellent components that are available.
Click to expand...

I think you missed my point. There is actually a deficiency in Windows more often with video cards because device drivers in windows ARE part of the windows system, especially when they are qualified by Microsoft. Likewise, all the hardware that is used with windows IS a part of the windows system, and since the code has to run on such a wide variety of hardware solutions, many times there are incompatibilities. I actually spent MANY years programming in the WIN32API and the Object Oriented varieties, MFC and OWL. You might think that it is always the third parties fault with their drivers, this is NOT always the case. ALL operating systems have a huge number of bugs all over the place. Many times, third parties have no choice but to work around a serious bug in the OS.

The reason I went OSX was not because I thought Windows was inferior, I just knew that the OS was built SPECIFICALLY for the hardware BY the manufacturer and testing in combination with ALL devices that came with the system. The software AND the hardware were ultimately controlled by the same source. For this, I've been able to run a much more stable system for MY needs. Others may not have such aggressive needs as my machine and their mileage may vary. (As I mentioned, my machine is optimized for music production and scoring, and I am VERY demanding on my machine and the external connections to it.)

But, there is no doubt that there are better components available to those in the PC world, you just have to fight with compatibility more often because microsoft doesn't control the hardware. If they did, Windows would run much smoother with more hardware. But then, some people don't like that. I certainly understand both sides.
 
Barend Onneweer said:
I don't want to be rude or anything, but those specs don't make a whole lot of sense. You really don't want a G5 but something more current. The Apple G5's were retired in 2006...

An 8 drive RAID will fit into some enclosures, but 16 drives is an external RAID case. As a matter of fact if you'll be editing RED Raw you won't even need the speed because the datarates are not that high...

Why would you need 5.1 audio monitoring for simple rough cuts? Are you going to be doing surround mixes on the system?

I'd just go with a Core i7 CPU with 6 or 12 GB RAM, and a good gaming graphics card. HP workstations are great machines for this. Towards the higher end BOXX is excellent.

Anyway - I'm not really able to make much sense of your specs.
Click to expand...

I'm going to second this as well. My G5 Mac Pro tower was slower than my Intel Mac Mini, which is why the G5 tower went away. I see no advantage to the G5 tower AND it is VERY LOUD. The fans in that thing are like Jet engines.

I'll also say, from an audio standpoint, I'm not sure your expertise, but you will need a sound device that can do 6 discrete channels OR use a real-time encoder to either Dolby or DTS and a decoder to a set of speakers. Further, I've not seen the best support for 5.1 sound in editing software, I do all 5.1 edits in ProTools or Logic.

I also have to agree, with what you want to do, which is not very overly complex, I think going the PC route is going to be the best solution for the money.
 
As far as "over the counter" brands, the main thing is to choose a model from their workstation lineups. These are more geared towards professional work such as video editing.

HP - xw or Z series
Dell - Precision series
Lenovo - Thinkstation series

You budget will determine how much computer you will be able to buy, and how well it will be able to handle a RED workflow. You will definitely get more bang for you buck if you build it yourself, but if that's not up your alley, then over the counter may work for you. As others have mentioned there are many other vendors such as Boxx and others who tailor their products more towards specialty needs such as video editing.

Hope that helps.
 
Zach Zoller said:
Just curious I'm a Mac/Windows user myself but I have never done any video/film work on a Windows OS. Has anyone done any film workflow on Mac hardware running Windows?

Z
Click to expand...

Only Media Composer. Using Bootcamp. Semi pointless really because the dongle is completely cross platform so it'll work on either OS.

If i remember correctly it was because we always had Maya issues on Mac's. So bootcamp with 3D zone. To be honest though I am completely Mac illiterate. so most things are a frustration to me on a Mac.

As far as things go though once in bootcamp you are in a Windows environment and everything works as if it was on a PC.
 
Rick Burnett said:
I think you missed my point. There is actually a deficiency in Windows more often with video cards because device drivers in windows ARE part of the windows system, especially when they are qualified by Microsoft. Likewise, all the hardware that is used with windows IS a part of the windows system, and since the code has to run on such a wide variety of hardware solutions, many times there are incompatibilities. I actually spent MANY years programming in the WIN32API and the Object Oriented varieties, MFC and OWL. You might think that it is always the third parties fault with their drivers, this is NOT always the case. ALL operating systems have a huge number of bugs all over the place. Many times, third parties have no choice but to work around a serious bug in the OS.

The reason I went OSX was not because I thought Windows was inferior, I just knew that the OS was built SPECIFICALLY for the hardware BY the manufacturer and testing in combination with ALL devices that came with the system. The software AND the hardware were ultimately controlled by the same source. For this, I've been able to run a much more stable system for MY needs. Others may not have such aggressive needs as my machine and their mileage may vary. (As I mentioned, my machine is optimized for music production and scoring, and I am VERY demanding on my machine and the external connections to it.)

But, there is no doubt that there are better components available to those in the PC world, you just have to fight with compatibility more often because microsoft doesn't control the hardware. If they did, Windows would run much smoother with more hardware. But then, some people don't like that. I certainly understand both sides.
Click to expand...


To add to that, it's also really hard to know the "quality of the product" you are buying. There are 10+ ram manufacturers, tons of mobo companies, video cards. Everybody and their mother is making something. Sometimes you don't even know if one piece of tech is gonna work with another AT ALL. Years ago I bought ATI card that was completely incompatible with my motherboard. Just drop dead did not work at all, and would never work with that ASUS motheboard in a million years. You even have different flavors of i5 processors where they'll only work in specific configurations.

I don't agree with Apple's practices, over pricing, moderate changes to their system every year, and slow to optimizing their OS further (and don't get me started about FCS and macbook pro's) but in the end, so many people rely on the mac is because you have a very high chance of getting a rock solid stable computer right over the counter at a Apple store, and it offers really good head room to trick out as you need compared to if you bought an HP from best buy.


PC's do however offer the most expansive capability, especially when you start running full on Linux systems, and the benefit to the drawback is really the fact that cause there are so many parts you can frankenstein in and out, you have really amazing modularity, and high competition to keep the prices down.

A lot of Avid post houses run PC, their DS systems run on PC. render boxx is pc based tech, actually, MAC'S use PC parts, only thing in there custom made by mac is probably the case and power supply... the line of pc vs mac is gone IMO, it's just about what OS you are running and who's parts your using...
 
George D. said:
Thanks Jeremy, but all I want to do is what I said.
I want to be able to put scenes together in a preferred order, and save them that way. Then be able to reduce the quality and put that on a disc or external hard drive, for viewing by a third party. That's it.
Click to expand...

why on planet earth would you buy a red then? Sorry to be so blunt but quality is the whole reason for buying red. you should consider buying a sony ex1 for example. your workflow would speed up incredibly and you save a pile of cash. That camera produces incredible images with a very friendly workflow.
 
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