Build or Buy a Editing Computer?

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Bill Mecca on June 3, 2011 at 10:47pm

I've built a couple, but not in several years. Pros= you can choose the best components and configuration for upgrade. Loads less expensive. Some of the "names" give you very little room inside for additional HD, cards etc. and their base price sounds good until you start customizing.  Cons= it can be a little nerve wracking choosing the right parts and installing (the cpu, heat sink etc  make me a bit nervous) ;-)

 

I'm in the process right now as my HP XW6000 (that I won in a contest) is getting a bit long in the tooth and HD is a bit tough for it to handle.

Still trying to choose components. 

Permalink Reply by Pierre Samuel Rioux on June 3, 2011 at 11:56pm

 

             The last 4 pc i just visiting the page of DIY at videoguys.com this section is great you have also price target and you know all the part work with out conflict because some before you try it.

              I also never buy the new model card ( mother board ) i all the time take one all ready know with a good reputation.

After i find the parts i need i asking for offer and must of the time i build my computer for cheaper of the original price i find on the list of DIY page.

               A good advice is look for what working well with your editor program.

 

Permalink Reply by Bill Mecca on June 4, 2011 at 2:38pm

The first one I built was built for a Pinnacle DC10 plus card, and I checked out the reccomended parts and went from there. (Celeron 400  lol)  I usually look at TigerDirect.com  they have some pretty good bare bones kits, but none with firewire on the mobo, so I have to go piece by piece. Gigabyte mobo is in the lead at the moment. I must also have PCI slots (not PCIe) for my Maudio 2496 card.

Checking your editing apps reccomended video card etc is always a good idea. ;-)

Permalink Reply by Charles Whatley on June 5, 2011 at 12:29am

I have bought one, built one, and then bought one.  My first purchase was an alienware 10 years ago ( I am typing on it now and still use it with Avid Liquid), I then built my own which was great ( really easy to do ) but it always seemed like it was missing a link, drivers, conflicts with parts etc.  Last year I bought a new Alienware Aurora.  I matched it up to run best with Premier Pro and leveraged the Graphic cards with Cuda.  I could have saved about 10% by builting it myself but that just didn't seem worth it.  Now, I did use Dell's University program for the purchase which is about 15% of list.  Dell will run specials every week ranging from 10 to 20 percent and often with free financing.

 

Good Luck

Permalink Reply by Jay Michael on June 5, 2011 at 1:08am

Thanks, I've been looking at the Aurora too. How do you like yours?

Permalink Reply by Michael David Kuhlman on August 17, 2011 at 5:44pm

I went with a hybrid "build/pre-built" scenario.  I knew how much processor speed, hard-drive, RAM, etc. I was going to need.  I bought a Dell Dimension 4550 with, at the time, lightning-fast 2 gigahertz processor, 1 gig of RAM, 2 120-gig hard drives (one, the "C" drive, for bootup and programs, one, the "E" drive just for video and project storage; have since added a terabyte external hard drive for video storage, because 3 wedding videos, footage and edited files, eat up that 120 gigs in a hurry), then added a Canopus DV Storm 2 real-time accelerator board, installed into the first available PCI slot, which takes most of the processing of data burden away from the computer (best investment I ever made--Canopus' native YUV colorspace renders and exports are 4x faster than conventional RGB rendering), then added all the appropriate software, including Canopus proprietary Storm Edit software, Adobe Premiere (which is installed first so Canopus can then install all their plug-ins into it), TMP-Genc Plus Plus software MPEG encoder for DVD video encoding, Sonic DVDit! Pro Edition for DVD authoring and burning.  It's had its quirks, but once you learn to work around them, it's a great system; works smoothly.

 

That was back when DV and DVD were considered adequate quality for most end users.  Now that HD is all the rage, you can pretty much figure you're going to have to more than double everything; processor speed, RAM, hard drive, and be prepared to wait a much longer time for renders, because everything about HD is miserably slow.  Maybe Canopus and other companies make real-time HD editing systems tied to blu-ray disc burners.  Others will have more info.  You can bet they're in the $10,000+ range pre-built. 

 

I'm of the opinion that it's suicide to get into HD editing for long-form projects (like wedding videos).  Unless you're offering short-form "highlight reels", everything about HD is time and cost-prohibitive for long-form work at this point.  I SHOOT my weddings with an HD camera, but in standard-def 480i in 16x9 anamorphic widescreen, to rave reviews:  Clients think it IS HD; it looks so good.  I think most of the uneducated public is more concerned about the FORMAT of the video being right, 16x9 widescreen, so they don't look fat (from stretching a 4x3 image out to 16x9) or endure black bars on the sides of the image on their HDTVs.

 

Pros of buying a custom built computer?  All the parts, hardware, software and plug-ins are installed to seamlessly integrate with each other, specifically for video editing, with no unrelated programs which would normally be allocated to computer operation, like internet usage, word processing, etc.  It's a screaming fast machine.  No configuration hassles.

 

Cons?  Price.  And, if your hard-drives are lined up in a RAID array, where all the hard drives share all the data, if one crashes, the whole hard drive array is useless.

 

PC or Mac?  I went with PC, because PCs are cheaper than Macs, and, at the time, early 2000s, more programs were written for PC than Mac.  In Mac, in the early 2000s, you were limited I think primarily to Avid, which is expensive and cumbersome to operate, and Final Cut Pro was in its infancy.  Now you can probably get any editing program for PC or Mac.  Mac is also a simpler operating system than PC, so it's leaner and meaner.  If you plan to also use the computer for internet access (I would advise getting a second computer for that), Macs get infected with fewer viruses than PCs, although, as Macs gain in popularity, you can bet they will be infected with viruses too.