Which Graphics Card for video editing ?

[ronscuba]

Adobe is taking advantage of the quickly evolving capabilities of hardware such as graphics cards, CPU, RAM, etc.. Now more than in the past, going with a turnkey system assembled by a specialist company, specifically built for editing video is the way to go. You would be surprised how choosing the correct components can add up to a faster or slower system. Just because a particular component is more expensive does not mean it will work faster for video editing. For example, at a certain point, adding more RAM will do nothing other than cost you more money.

Fast renders, ability to handle any video codec, realtime full resolution previews. I recommend getting a turnkey system by ADK Video if you are looking for a new video editing system.

 

[AndyT]

Hold the bus!!! (PC, that is).

If you are going to use Adobe products, make absolutely sure your GC supports the Adobe codecs. I do video and photo, and built a machine from scratch (8 drives, mirroring, SSD boot, 24GB RAM, i7) and you will make a huge error if you don't check out the cross-references. YOu can check their webiste here: Movie editor, DVD editing software | Adobe Premiere Pro CS6 - Tech specs, which also has an internal link for the nVidia site.

Many thanks for the responses, much appreciated.

I had to go ahead with the info that I had at the time as my PC had failed and ended up with the following:

CPU - Intel i72600k
M/B - Asus P8P67-M PRO
Memory - 16Gb Ram (DDR3 1333Mhz)
VGA Card - Asus GTX560Ti DirectCUII TOP (has CUDA support)
C-Drive - Samsung 830 series SSD 128 Gb (Windows and Program files only)
D-Drive - Samsung 830 series SSD 256 Gb (for images and video that I am currently working on)

I had a look at the link that you provided and see that my GC card is not listed. What are the "implications" of this? I am not too clued up on the codec issue as yet so any info will be much appreciated.

I currently only have Adobe Premier Elements, if the video thing takes off with me I will certainly look at Powerdirector as well.
That and the fact that I have only really just gotten started using a GoPro for video capture.

Thanks again for the responses, any further info will be much appreciated.

 

[flareside]

I suggest adding a storage drive, something in the 1.5-2TB range. Photos and video will eat up a 256GB drive very quickly.

 

[AndyT]

Yup - I have 2 x 1 TB drives to store my images on, one as storage and one as backup.
I am currently using only half of the space so it should be good for a while yet.

 

[ronscuba]

I had a look at the link that you provided and see that my GC card is not listed. What are the "implications" of this? I am not too clued up on the codec issue as yet so any info will be much appreciated.

.....

The video codec (file type/structure) used by DSLR's and many of the newer camcorders compresses a lot of "video" information into a small file. Your computer and editing software needs to read this file and uncompress it for editing, then recompress/render it. Trimming the length of a video file is easy. Video color correction is difficult and requires a lot of power from your HW and SW. Video consists of 30-60 still images for every 1 second of video. Color correcting 10 seconds of video is correcting 300-600 still images.

Adobe wrote their software to take advantage of the GC card accelerators in certain GC's. This is for Adobe Premiere. Not sure if it is true for Adobe Elements. If you have a GC that is not on their list, it will work but it will not work as fast as a card on their list.

 

[AndyT]

Thanks ronscuba, now I have a better understanding of how things work.