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Recommendations for Editing Stations under $3K?
  • 143 Replies sorted by
  • Brian_SianoBrian_Siano

    I'm constrained by budget, of course, and the 4790K chip is appealing because I can secure that and a mobo for under $500. But @DrDave, how much speed would I gain if I were to spring the $1000 for a hexacore upgrade?

    Or, more specifically: as I said, I need to do multiple-camera edits, and my system can't do more than one 1080p stream at a time without choking. (It can handle four 720p streams reasonably well.) Could a 4790K CPU enable me to handle four 1080p video streams?

  • DrDaveDrDave

    The 22nm BX80633i74930K runs about $580. As for multicam, it does depend on different factors, but I can do 4 1080p multicam, depending on the filter load (it won't run neatvideo realtime....). If you are using this thing hours and hours everyday, you may want 6/ht12 cores. Faster renders, faster editing, etc, etc. Now the Haswell 4/8HT is a fine chip as well, and it also depends on whether you want to OC the six core chip slightly to make up a bit of the clock difference.

  • Brian_SianoBrian_Siano

    thanks @DrDave. The 4930 has my nod for the moment, but your comments about cores got me looking at AMD's hexacore and octacore chips. And PP's offering more support for AMD chips, which means that I might be able to take advantage of AMD's lower prices and get some serious speed.

  • Vitaliy_KiselevVitaliy_Kiselev

    If you are using this thing hours and hours everyday, you may want 6/ht12 cores. Faster renders, faster editing, etc, etc. Now the Haswell 4/8HT is a fine chip as well, and it also depends on whether you want to OC the six core chip slightly to make up a bit of the clock difference.

    I asked for the test what shows it. In real life 6 core most of the time is slower, just as it is clocked lower and current generation is one (or two, as you want to count) steps behind 1150 chips. Haswell-E will be better, but it also require more costly DDR4 memory (and as it has more channels, you need more DIMMS anyway).

    I think here we went just to the fantasy land, as @Brian_Siano can't even find finances to the 4790K upgrade now, and it is suggested for him to pay much more.

  • DrDaveDrDave

    Download speccy, why not, it's fun! Then you can see all the different ways the hardware interacts with Premiere pro. http://ppbm7.com/index.php/results/new-ppbm6-results

    You will see that most of the top results are hexacore chips, with a dual Xeon or two thrown in.

    Note that having more than one hard disk is important, I have ten currently but a lot of those are storage. I had originally planned dual chip system, but when I saw what the hexacore chips could do, I saved myself some time and money, plus dual Xeons are more complicated to build.

    Your workflow is going to be affected by the types of projects, but a fast i7 will speed up everything from noise reduction to export.

    I always do figure what my time is worth. If I waste an hour, I can't get that back, so I look at the computer itself as having a big financial impact. If I cut my waiting time by even 15 percent, that's hours and hours of time over a year. Really figure what your time is worth, and how many multicam tracks you have. If you need multicam, and it freezes, it doesn't matter what the chip is, you can't do your work.

    However, if you can't stretch the budget for the hexacore, an i7 is a great chip. Make really sure it has HT to get 4 real cores plus 4 surreal cores. There will always be a faster chip around the corner, you can't go wrong with an i7 4/8 and then upgrade later to an octacore in a year or two.

  • Vitaliy_KiselevVitaliy_Kiselev

    @DrDave

    Just check their approach to benchmarks - http://ppbm7.com/index.php/homepage/instructions

    They measure:

    • Export the Disk I/O timeline to a Microsoft DV AVI file.
    • Export the H.264 timeline to a H.264 file.
    • Export the MPEG2 timeline to a MPEG2 file with hardware MPE.
    • Export the MPEG2 timeline to a MPEG2 file with software MPE.

    Of course hexacore will be better with such approach. As it is almost only encoding.

    Most such benchmarks originate from good idea but quickly become trash as they just can't properly make tests, isolate that affect results, etc.

    Their PC building pages is also epic, really epic monster shit.

  • Pedro_ESPedro_ES

    @Vitaliy_Kiselev I am curious to know about what you have found to be "monster shit". I am reading some of their advices and I think it is mostly reasonable.

  • Vitaliy_KiselevVitaliy_Kiselev

    @Pedro_ES

    History of building monster shit computer :-)

  • DrDaveDrDave

    I'm doing a 4K export right now, and I expect with all the filters it will take about 2 hours and twenty minutes to render a two minute clip. It may crash and I'll have to run it again, which is really annoying. Without the filters, it takes about two minutes to render the same clip in 1080p. So I definitely appreciate the advantages of faster encoding. But other stuff runs faster as well, and Brian specifically mentioned multicam.

    Obviously, if you aren't doing a lot of export, and not running a lot of filters, then fifteen percent of two minutes is not worth the upgrade. But if you think you are going to be at least trying out 4K and maybe H265, it might be worth considering.

  • Vitaliy_KiselevVitaliy_Kiselev

    I'm doing a 4K export right now, and I expect with all the filters it will take about 2 hours and twenty minutes to render a two minute clip.

    Thing you describe is more software limited, as difference between filters and their implementations can be as big as 20x. Same goes for filters GPU versions (in Adobe products it is latest CC usually).

    It also do not really describe how most people are working, as most do not use heavy non GPU optimized filters. Most people I met do not use any filters really, except light grading.

    Encoding limits now are also software as good GPU/QuckSync optimized H265 encoders do not exist yet. But it is no biggie, as H.265 will take quite a while to be useful. Looking around I see absolutely horrible situation in small studios in US/UK who still not even always deliver H.264 to clients, still MPEG2 and such.

  • tylerknighttylerknight

    I built a workhorse of a computer for $1000 CAD!

    i7 4770k, 12gb ram, nvidia geforce gtx 760 Can't remember my mobo but it isn't a crap one that's for sure!

    I am able to edit 4 streams of 4k footage in a multicam edit no problem, HD is a dream, but 4k does stutter occasionally with larger projects.

    Overall there is no need to spend more than $1500 on a system anymore.

  • Brian_SianoBrian_Siano

    This has been very informative. Right now, I'm balancing two choices: the Intel 4790K or the 4930K.

    The 4790K has the advantage of being cheaper by roughly $400, and if @tylerknight is correct about his 4770k, then my problems should be taken care of. The 4930K is clearly much faster, and offers better advantages when Premiere Pro takes advantage of multithreading and six cores.

    So now I have one last question. As I said, I'm using Premiere Pro CS5. I understand that upgrading would get me a lot of advantages, but hey, budgets. The question is whether CS5 can take advantage of the hexacore and multithreading features of the 4930K. If it can, then that chip'd be a huge advantage. If it can't-- if I'd need to upgrade my Adobe software-- then it might make better sense to stick with the 4790K.

    ADDENDUM: Checking around the Web,. it seems that CS5 does take advantage of a six-core system.

  • DrDaveDrDave

    4930K is $580, and the or so, and the 4790K is $350, so the difference for the chips is $230. CS5 is threaded, not sure if CS6 is faster but for some things the CS5 H264 encoder is definitely better quality. Recommend you get a main board that you can do a mild OC of ten percent or so for any chip you select.

    Although tests show that 12gb ram is enough, I would still pop for 16gb.

  • Brian_SianoBrian_Siano

    Just to pass along some info: I just checked Pricewatch for CPU-Motherboard combo deals.

    A 4790K system with an Asus motherboard can be had for as little as $372. A 4390K system with ASRock notherboards start around $779.

  • DrDaveDrDave

    Yup--factor in the price of the Mainboard. Decent LGA 2011 MB is $200 or more. Definitely makes it less attractive price wise.

  • DrDaveDrDave

    The long, long awaited octacore is out $999--I guess I will have to buy one :) http://www.anandtech.com/show/8426/the-intel-haswell-e-cpu-review-core-i7-5960x-i7-5930k-i7-5820k-tested

  • Vitaliy_KiselevVitaliy_Kiselev

  • fotosiamofotosiamo

    If you're looking for a mobile laptop editing station, I highly suggest the Gigabyte P35W v2. It's as light (5.07 lbs) and thin (0.83") as a Macbook Pro Retina, but can carry 4 hard drives inside! It also has a matte IPS screen and has tons of performance built in. I have last year's model which has a 2GB nVidia GTX 765M + Haswell i7.

    This year's model is pretty damn insane with its intel i7-4700HQ CPU and a whopping 6GB nVidia GTX 870M graphics card. Now that's a beast!

    Finally, it has a miniDisplayPort to output to a 4K monitor.

    http://www.xoticpc.com/gigabyte-p35wv2cf2-p-7097.html

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