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Bedivere
Why Do Witches Burn?



Joined: 25 Jul 2008
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Bedivere
Why Do Witches Burn?
PostFri Mar 09, 2018 2:09 pm 
Okay folks, let me know if I'm indulging in wishful thinking here... My computer is old. About 9 years old to be more specific. It was top-notch when I built it, is super stable and it still does everything I need it to do EXCEPT run Adobe Premiere. I'm getting my feet wet in video editing and want to go beyond the very limited things that Windows Movie Maker can do. I want to be able to apply multiple effects and in particular do keyframing and multi-track editing. I have the Adobe Creative Cloud subscription so decided to dive in and learn Premiere Pro. Been watching tutorial videos and figuring it out but I'm now running up against the limitations of my hardware. Any sequence composed of multiple clips with transitions and effects that goes longer than about 10 seconds starts stuttering and skipping and won't play back properly which makes editing nearly impossible. I looked into what it would take to build a modern computer with recommended hardware and it would be over $1000 for the processor, mobo, ram, and additional hard drive. I'll probably need to upgrade my graphics card as well (which is only a few years old but lower horsepower than what I probably need). Just don't have the money for that right now. So, any suggestions for editing software that you've used or have good knowledge of that maybe isn't so hardware intensive? Windows Movie Maker runs just fine... LOL. I'm able to run Lightroom, Photoshop, Illustrator, etc. with no problems. I've been googling video editing software but really don't have a feel for which other packages are actually usable and robust vs. just looking pretty but buggy and crash-prone or if any will be reasonable to use with my older hardware. In case anyone's curious, the current setup is: AMD Phenom II X4 965 3.4ghz processor (2009 vintage) 16gb RAM 250 gb SSD - OS and applications installed here 1 tb HDD - storage for media (music, pictures, video, etc) Nvidia GeForce GTX 950 video card. The 1tb HDD is getting full so will need to add another storage drive as well. Currently have a 2tb WD MyCloud backing up my images and music directories.

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huron
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PostFri Mar 09, 2018 4:59 pm 
It may not be the video app but rather your chosen resolution and frame rate. I'm using Davinci Resolve 14 (free version) and it works well on a 3 year old laptop for 1080p.

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Randito
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PostFri Mar 09, 2018 5:56 pm 
FWIW: here is a link to current CPU performance measurements. http://m.cpubenchmark.net/desktop.html Top end devices score in the 20,000 range vs 4400 for your current device. So you might expect a 4-5 fold improvement by buying a newer system. The other thing to note is that during PREVIEW thge video editing software will drop frames to try to render in realtime. However when you RENDER the final output the should take as much time as it needs to render every frame accurately. This might mean that a complex edit could take many times longer than runtime to render for publishing. FWIW: When I was developing video editing software, we replaced our PC's every year so that the amount of time we were paid to wait was minimized.

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williswall
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PostSat Mar 10, 2018 9:41 pm 
I had a quad core MAC tower, late 2008. When I tried to edit 2.7K video it sputtered. I'm now running an iMac, late 2014, 4GHZ i7. The difference was amazing, I can run multiple threads of 2.7K video and/or 4K with no frames dropped. I'm no computer expert but the improvement comes from more than just processor speed. You'll also need fast external drives for the video....I'm currently running a quad 16 TB RAID 5 (so 12 TBs of usable space) and another 10 TB on some peripheral drives, only using my computer hard drive for system and applications.

I desire medium danger williswall.com
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NacMacFeegle
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PostSun Mar 11, 2018 2:53 pm 
Huron wrote:
It may not be the video app but rather your chosen resolution and frame rate. I'm using Davinci Resolve 14 (free version) and it works well on a 3 year old laptop for 1080p.
ditto.gif The free version of Resolve is great. Seems to be pretty efficient, so I think there's a good chance of it running well on older, less powerful hardware. It does very well indeed on my 4 year old desktop with an 4th generation i5, 32GB of RAM, and a GTX 980. If you are looking to upgrade your PC, right now would be a terrible time to do so. The whole cryptocurrency craze has driven prices for components through the roof! The only practical route for the foreseeable future is going to be pre-built systems. The good news is that if you can afford it a thousand bucks will get you a pretty sweet system if you shop sales. I saw a system with an i7 and a GTX 1080 for only a little over $1000 a few months ago.

Read my hiking related stories and more at http://illuminationsfromtheattic.blogspot.com/
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Bedivere
Why Do Witches Burn?



Joined: 25 Jul 2008
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Bedivere
Why Do Witches Burn?
PostMon Mar 12, 2018 2:55 pm 
Thanks folks. My rather longwinded post probably obscured the fact that I'm aware that my ancient hardware is at the root of the problem. What I'm looking for is a software package that may work with my old hardware and still deliver the main features I'm looking for. I'll give this Davinci software a try, maybe that's the solution for now. I'm planning to output to 1080p/24 or 29fps. Much of the source material I'm working with for now is still images and 720p video, though there is some 1080p also. Going forward I'm planning to shoot a lot more 1080p video as my current camera is pretty good for that (Nikon D7200) and I'm also thinking of acquiring a used GoPro. I don't have the money for any hardware upgrades at this time. Nac - I'm curious - why are pre-built systems cheaper? I thought the crypto-currency kooks were only interested in the highest end hardware and video cards specifically. If the cost of componentry has been driven up, why would pre-built systems containing the same components be cheaper? Not saying I disagree with you, just not understanding the economics of this new phenomena. In the past it was always cheaper to build your own system and you weren't forced to accept bloatware and sub-standard or superfluous hardware as part of the package. I see no reason to replace my case, fans, power supply (a newer 850 watt model) and existing drives.

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Randito
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PostTue Mar 13, 2018 8:23 am 
Bedivere wrote:
and existing drives.
FWIW: The performance of SSD and magnetic disk drives declines with age -- even if you reformat the drives and reinstall the OS. Also consider looking up the specs of your current drives and comparing them to the specs of currently available drives.

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DigitalJanitor
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PostTue Mar 13, 2018 8:41 am 
FWIW I recently scored a heck of a deal on NewEgg for a new monster 'puter with video editing in mind. Their open box/refurb deals are definitely worth checking frequently. Might suggest husby try Divinci one of these days.

~Mom jeans on wheels
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Bedivere
Why Do Witches Burn?



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Bedivere
Why Do Witches Burn?
PostTue Mar 13, 2018 5:36 pm 
RandyHiker wrote:
Bedivere wrote:
and existing drives.
FWIW: The performance of SSD and magnetic disk drives declines with age -- even if you reformat the drives and reinstall the OS. Also consider looking up the specs of your current drives and comparing them to the specs of currently available drives.
Thanks. The SSD still works fine according to benchmark tests. The HDD is a storage drive for my media, it doesn't have to be super high performance. HDDs haven't changed much over the years. This one is a 7200 RPM Hitachi with a 64mb cache so does okay. The HDD is nearly full, I know I need to add another one and 2tb drives are pretty cheap now. this will simply be for media storage so doesn't have to be blazing fast. I would also like to add another SSD to act as a scratch disk and working file storage as that will really speed up the operation and a 500mb unit would be more than sufficient.

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NacMacFeegle
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PostWed Mar 14, 2018 11:15 pm 
Bedivere wrote:
Nac - I'm curious - why are pre-built systems cheaper? I thought the crypto-currency kooks were only interested in the highest end hardware and video cards specifically. If the cost of componentry has been driven up, why would pre-built systems containing the same components be cheaper? Not saying I disagree with you, just not understanding the economics of this new phenomena.
At the moment crypto miners are just grabbing everything they can get their hands on. Even low grade hardware can earn them a decent profit so long as crypto-currency prices remain high. Even old, used hardware is selling for way more than it should! In fact, I just looked up your GTX 950 on ebay, and those cards are going used for nearly their list price! I think the reason pre-built systems aren't selling for so much is because the companies that make those systems get their supply directly from the GPU manufacturers, so they are paying what the cards are actually supposed to cost. However, while prices are still high, they do seem to be lower than they were a short while ago. I picked out a pre-built $1,500 PC out on Newegg this evening, and used PCpartpicker to match the components as closely as I could. It came out to a minimum of $1,600, and that was using some extremely low priced components of dubious manufacture. I expect that if I were actually building that PC I would go another $100 higher.
Bedivere wrote:
In the past it was always cheaper to build your own system and you weren't forced to accept bloatware and sub-standard or superfluous hardware as part of the package. I see no reason to replace my case, fans, power supply (a newer 850 watt model) and existing drives.
Even 6 months ago it was cheaper to build your own system, and it's entirely possible that in another 6 months it will be again. Right now it seems be primarily RAM and GPU's that are overpriced. Looking back at your specs, I'm thinking that it would probably be cheaper to upgrade a few components than to replace your whole system. A GTX 1050 ti would be a huge upgrade from the 950, and would run you $170. the latest Intel processer ( i7 8700k) is $350, and you'd probably match it with a $100 motherboard. Throw in a CPU cooler and you're looking at roughly $650. You could shave $100 or more off of that by going with a cheaper Intel or AMD CPU. I think you should be good with your RAM, and hard drives are really cheap ($50-$60 for 1 TB HDD). Building from scratch isn't a good option at the moment, but upgrading makes more sense than buying an entirely new system if enough of your parts are modern enough.

Read my hiking related stories and more at http://illuminationsfromtheattic.blogspot.com/
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Bedivere
Why Do Witches Burn?



Joined: 25 Jul 2008
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Bedivere
Why Do Witches Burn?
PostFri Mar 16, 2018 2:10 am 
Thanks Nac. I'm really wondering what route to go. The recommended minimum processor by a 3rd party company that builds systems for video editing is the i7-7820. The 7820 is an 8 core processor vs. 6 cores for the 8700k. The 7820 is one generation older than the 8700. The 7820 costs about $160 more and requires motherboards that are about twice as expensive as the boards for the 8700k. I wonder if I could get away with an 8700K, that would save me over a couple hundred bucks. Either way though I'm going to have to buy new DDR4 RAM and that stuff is expensive these days! I don't remember whether I have DDR2 or DD3 currently, but either way it isn't compatible with a new mobo. I have to get a new HDD. The one I have is full. I can probably live with my GPU for now. I was doing some reading and it looks like Premiere relies on the CPU for real-time playback while editing and the GPU for rendering final output. Wouldn't bother me if the final rendering takes a long time. The big problem I'm having now is the playback while editing just doesn't work which makes it impossible to actually do anything. A new CPU should fix that. Rumors are the hardware companies are going to start releasing GPUs/processors specifically for crypto currency computing. If that happens it should take the pressure off the GPU market and allow prices to fall back to normal.

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Bedivere
Why Do Witches Burn?



Joined: 25 Jul 2008
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Bedivere
Why Do Witches Burn?
PostFri Mar 16, 2018 3:11 pm 
Okay, I just stumbled across this: https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Premiere-Pro-CC-2017-1-2-CPU-Performance-Core-i7-8700K-i5-8600K-i3-8350K-1047/ It's also important to note they're testing 4K and higher footage and I don't plan to do anything more than 1080 for the time being. to me, it looks like an i7-8700k is just about on par with the much more expensive i7-7820x. That brings the affordability factor up quite a bit. Instead of a $460 processor + $250 mobo I can easily get away with a $300 processor + $125 mobo. The big problem is still RAM and GPU now. I think I'll wait a couple months and see what shakes out and hope prices on those things come down.

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