Is my system powerful enough?

[rgomes]

Hello all!

A proud new owner of the HV20 with a quick question:

I plan on shooting/capturing everything in HD. I don't want to spend hours and hours editing the footage. Just do some basic tinkering, add some neat menus and burn a DVD. I know it won't be in HD but in SD format.

Is my system powerful enough to handle working with the HD files which I am told are huge?

I have a P4 (3.0), 250 GB HDD, and 2 GB RAM.

In terms of software, I was leaning towards Adobe Premiere only because I'd like to pick up the Adobe Photoshop Elements/Premiere Elements bundle from Amazon. Most people here on these forums seem to favour Sony Vegas.

What can you tell me?

Thanks!

[Lunchbox]

A Dual Core CPU and 2GB RAM is preferred. You will also need to have separate harddrives for video files.

[rgomes]

A Dual Core CPU and 2GB RAM is preferred. You will also need to have separate harddrives for video files.

Why dual core and why seperate drives?

Thanks!

[Lunchbox]

You need a faster processor. I thought that's straight forward.

For hdd, you can read this thread

http://www.hv20.com/showthread.php?t=10201

[cornreaper]

For the time being, you'd probably be better off downconverting to SD right from the camera and editing with that. I'm in the same boat as you as far as PC specs are concerned, so that's what I'm doing for now. Also, I'm not too sure if Elements can handle HDV, but Vegas can if you really want to try.

[Lunchbox]

Element 4 can edit HDV.

For a slow machine you can try Proxy Editing to output HDV.

http://www.hv20.com/showthread.php?t=4942

[Wes Vasher]

I have a P4 2.8 and unless you use some type of intermediate format you should probably just capture your HDV as DV and edit that.

[genezod12]

I have a p4 3.4ghz with 2gb dual channel RAM. The video card is very good, but not intended for video editing.

It is by no means a monster video editor but it gets the job done for everything that I need to do (for now) albeit a little slowly. I figure as I get better with the camera I might deserve a better machine.. I'm thinking about switching to apple with Final cut.

[tcindie]

I have a p4 3.4ghz with 2gb dual channel RAM. The video card is very good, but not intended for video editing.

It is by no means a monster video editor but it gets the job done for everything that I need to do (for now) albeit a little slowly. I figure as I get better with the camera I might deserve a better machine.. I'm thinking about switching to apple with Final cut.

That's not necessarily "better" .. it's all subjective really. (It would also be much more expensive.)

[nolonemo]

Whoa! Time out here. So much of what people have posted not completely accurate.

I am editing HDV projects in Vegas 8 Pro on a laptop with a 1.2Gh PIII processor. I have an 80gb hard drive and 1GB of RAM.

This rig has just enough horsepower to edit SD video with full framerate playback in the preview window. As soon as you start adding effects, pan/crop, etc. the preview frame rate drops, though.

I can edit HDV on this machine because I do the editing on SD proxy files, which don't require as much horsepower as editing straight HDV (the horsepower is not needed for the editing itself, but for being able to play the video at a high enough framerate so you can accurately see the effects of the editing). I am using Gearshift, a $50 download from the VASST site which completely automates the process. You can do it manually, but I figured that for the amount I would be doing, the $50 was well spent.

The one thing about my slow machine is that renders take a really long time, but I let renders go overnight and/or during the day when I'm at my day job.

Would I like to have a supercharged laptop that would let me edit straight HDV and do real-time renders? Sure I would. But my point is that you can work with HDV just fine with a pretty slow machine, especially if you're not doing real fancy stuff. You don't have to get all your hardware ducks in a row before jumping into the water!

[Lunchbox]

How could you say what other said is inaccurate while you claim you "editing HDV projects in Vegas 8 Pro on a laptop with a 1.2Gh PIII processor. I have an 80gb hard drive and 1GB of RAM."

What you are doing is proxy editing. You edit SD files. That's not editing HDV.

[barrysanders20]

Yes, it would be best to invest in a newer computer. At a minimum, I would suggest a dual core machine with 2GB or more of RAM. If you wanted to go the cheap route, you can use a program like Gearshift that will allow you to do proxy editing.

http://www.vasst.com/gearshift.htm
http://www.vasst.com/Gearshift/gearshift_faq.htm

However, if you go the proxy method, you'll feel like you want a newer computer when it comes to rendering.

[Lunchbox]

This is a good deal for a quad core PC

http://www.hv20.com/showthread.php?t=10404