Author Topic: Video editing on a budget.  (Read 5687 times)

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Offline davelectronicTopic starter

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Video editing on a budget.
« on: February 16, 2020, 03:03:41 pm »
Recently my 14 year old Son has shown an interest in video editing. Mainly clips of Marvel and super hero stuff etc up until now he's used his tablet and mobile phone to do this. I've ask him if he would like a pc that is capable of doing this. I'm just a general web surfer, social media etc. I have no experience in video editing or gaming (my Sons other interest) So I'm tasked with putting together a desktop pc to do these to things.

As my Son does flit about with hobbies and interst, i didn't want to throw a fortune on hardware. From what I've read, its the cpu and ram that does the lions share of the editing rendering etc. So i was looking at used hardware for this desktop PC, with the intention of upgrading if he sticks with it. I'm not sure about what socket to build it round , but intel 1155 H2 and AM3+ systems is what I've been looking at. I would prefer to purchase a bundle, but not sure on which processor to go for. Anyone with experience in video editing could suggest a socket and processor to start this build off would be a great help. I know a fare amount of ram is needed, and a reasonable graphics card also. What I'm unsure about is how high a specifications the hardware needs to be. For example I've been looking at AMD FX and earlier i7 generations.
Any advice and help greatly appreciated, and thanks for reading.
 

Offline NiHaoMike

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Re: Video editing on a budget.
« Reply #1 on: February 16, 2020, 03:12:07 pm »
Get a used server and add a cheap GPU.
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Offline davelectronicTopic starter

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Re: Video editing on a budget.
« Reply #2 on: February 16, 2020, 05:27:52 pm »
Never considered a server, my Son wants to game on it as well. At the moment I have been looking at editing software, as a general PC user my go to is Linux. I have used almost all the modern Windows OS from XP onwards. I'm not a windows fan, but i think windows is a must probably for software compatibility.
 

Offline NiHaoMike

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Re: Video editing on a budget.
« Reply #3 on: February 16, 2020, 05:35:03 pm »
Then go with a used server and add a somewhat better GPU to it. Steam runs on Linux so going Windows free is an option even for gaming.

Anything from AMD older than Ryzen is basically worthless nowadays and it seems like Ivy Bridge servers are dirt cheap and maybe even Haswell servers if you're lucky.
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Online tunk

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Re: Video editing on a budget.
« Reply #4 on: February 16, 2020, 06:20:20 pm »
Servers are big and quite noisy (at least those for 19" racks).
And many of them don't come with power cables for GPUs.
 

Offline NiHaoMike

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Re: Video editing on a budget.
« Reply #5 on: February 16, 2020, 07:06:40 pm »
The 2U servers I have worked with (Ivy Bridge and Haswell) are not particularly noisy and are smaller than many ATX form factor desktops. 1Us do tend to be noisy but you probably don't want one of those anyways since they rarely support 2 slot GPUs. 3U and up are great from an expandability perspective but less common.

As for the GPU power cables, it's trivial to figure out which pins on the riser are 12V and ground and make your own.
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Offline Halcyon

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Re: Video editing on a budget.
« Reply #6 on: February 16, 2020, 09:32:15 pm »
Honestly, I'd start your son off on the "free" route, at least until he decides he wants to get more serious with it and perhaps start saving up for his own rig.

For software, have a look at OpenShot Video Editor, it's completely free and open source. Although it's not anywhere near as polished as the big players (Adobe Premiere, Adobe After Effects, AVID Media Composer etc...) it still has a familiar interface and quite a lot of features for a free product. Later on if he wants something more powerful, you could consider getting a subscription to Adobe Creative Cloud.

As for hardware, you don't really need anything special. Whilst GPU rendering is very much a thing, CPU rendering is still quite reasonable, particularly if you're talking resolutions of 720P and below. The quality of the output won't be any different, it will just take longer to render on a slower machine and previews will probably need to be reduced in quality.

A reasonably good Intel i5 or i7 will do the trick (a Xeon would be even better). RAM is important. If your son is mostly dealing with HD content, 8 GB would be the absolute minimum I would recommend. 16 GB is good, 32 GB is even better.

Ultimately it comes down to how much you're willing to spend. We can throw specifications at you all day long, but if it's beyond your budget, it won't really help you.
 

Offline hans

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Re: Video editing on a budget.
« Reply #7 on: February 16, 2020, 10:09:16 pm »
I would not recommended using servers for desktop use. Server chips are mostly optimized for multi-threading performance with fairly low boost clocks (hence many cores at low clocks), and thereby they may decrease performance in applications like gaming. Sure the extra cores are nice during video encoding, but an unresponsive machine is the worst for day to day use.

If you get consumer Intel gear (Sandy Bridge and later I think), you can make use of the Intel's GPU with Intel Quicksync (if the editor supports it) to get your son started. Even if you don't use it, almost all i5's (2000 series up) are quad cores, and remain fairly capable for CPU encoding. I would skip the i3s, because the old ones are only dual cores with hyperthreading.

The AMD chips don't have internal GPUs with this functionality, and their CPU performance in that day and age wasn't that impressive that I can't necessarily recommended them. Unless you can get them like real cheap, maybe.
 

Offline Mr. Scram

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Re: Video editing on a budget.
« Reply #8 on: February 16, 2020, 10:25:39 pm »
Unfortunately video editing and gaming are some of the most resource intensive things you can do on a conputer and the workloads don't have matching requirements. I'd shy away from buying old hardware as that's really on the way out. Without a target budget it's hard to give a detailed advice but I'd start your boy off with too massive an investment and see how it goes. Maybe focus more on gaming as that's more likely to stick.
 

Offline Halcyon

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Re: Video editing on a budget.
« Reply #9 on: February 16, 2020, 10:26:29 pm »
The AMD chips don't have internal GPUs with this functionality, and their CPU performance in that day and age wasn't that impressive that I can't necessarily recommended them. Unless you can get them like real cheap, maybe.

My experience with AMD CPUs and GPUs are that they are less stable/reliable. Of course I'm generalising here and my opinion is based on many years of largely anecdotal evidence over a wide range of models and I know it will cause a stir among the AMD community, but heat-related and general instability is not unknown in the AMD world.

In over 20 years in the IT industry and having built or worked on thousands of computers, I don't think I've ever had a single Intel processor fail on me, where as I can probably think of about 5-10 instances where an AMD processor has. I've also had my fair share of failed AMD GPU's.
 

Offline Ed.Kloonk

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Re: Video editing on a budget.
« Reply #10 on: February 16, 2020, 10:46:50 pm »
Recently my 14 year old Son has shown an interest in video editing. Mainly clips of Marvel and super hero stuff etc up until now he's used his tablet and mobile phone to do this. I've ask him if he would like a pc that is capable of doing this. I'm just a general web surfer, social media etc. I have no experience in video editing or gaming (my Sons other interest) So I'm tasked with putting together a desktop pc to do these to things.

As my Son does flit about with hobbies and interst, i didn't want to throw a fortune on hardware. From what I've read, its the cpu and ram that does the lions share of the editing rendering etc. So i was looking at used hardware for this desktop PC, with the intention of upgrading if he sticks with it. I'm not sure about what socket to build it round , but intel 1155 H2 and AM3+ systems is what I've been looking at. I would prefer to purchase a bundle, but not sure on which processor to go for. Anyone with experience in video editing could suggest a socket and processor to start this build off would be a great help. I know a fare amount of ram is needed, and a reasonable graphics card also. What I'm unsure about is how high a specifications the hardware needs to be. For example I've been looking at AMD FX and earlier i7 generations.
Any advice and help greatly appreciated, and thanks for reading.

It's a good thing when you say you want to purchase a bundle, as opposed to a pre-built system which is likely to have upgrade restrictions and problems. What I am wondering is if the 14 yo has expressed any desire to maintain the computer hardware. A kid that age should be starting to understand what hardware powers the software packages and not just simply using the software packages.

I would give the kid a ball park budget and let him figure out what parts he wants, bang for buck. While he is waiting for a video to render on the phone, there are -lots- of websites and videos scrutinizing the various CPU and GPU combos. See if you can get your kid excited about building something.

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Offline Mr. Scram

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Re: Video editing on a budget.
« Reply #11 on: February 16, 2020, 10:53:19 pm »
My experience with AMD CPUs and GPUs are that they are less stable/reliable. Of course I'm generalising here and my opinion is based on many years of largely anecdotal evidence over a wide range of models and I know it will cause a stir among the AMD community, but heat-related and general instability is not unknown in the AMD world.

In over 20 years in the IT industry and having built or worked on thousands of computers, I don't think I've ever had a single Intel processor fail on me, where as I can probably think of about 5-10 instances where an AMD processor has. I've also had my fair share of failed AMD GPU's.
There always seem to be plenty of people with similar opinions for brand X or against brand Y. Without much to go on those seem to be just opinions. That being said, Intel has had series which degraded to the point of impacting functionality or malfunction. They don't exactly have a spotless record and that's by their own admission. Hardware is going to break and fail whichever brand it is and luckily the major brands are so reliable that little hard evidence to show a difference either way is around and what's left are just opinions flapping about.
 

Offline Ed.Kloonk

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Re: Video editing on a budget.
« Reply #12 on: February 16, 2020, 11:00:15 pm »
The AMD chips don't have internal GPUs with this functionality, and their CPU performance in that day and age wasn't that impressive that I can't necessarily recommended them. Unless you can get them like real cheap, maybe.

My experience with AMD CPUs and GPUs are that they are less stable/reliable. Of course I'm generalising here and my opinion is based on many years of largely anecdotal evidence over a wide range of models and I know it will cause a stir among the AMD community, but heat-related and general instability is not unknown in the AMD world.

In over 20 years in the IT industry and having built or worked on thousands of computers, I don't think I've ever had a single Intel processor fail on me, where as I can probably think of about 5-10 instances where an AMD processor has. I've also had my fair share of failed AMD GPU's.

I've had two, I think. One was that K6-2. Supposed to be compatible, but there was something about the Dos version of Norton Ghost that it didn't like. Only bought the computer because it was cheaper as a 2nd computer and only intended for offline tasks. That was the last time. 21 years ago. It's not like I hold a grudge or anything.



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Offline Halcyon

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Re: Video editing on a budget.
« Reply #13 on: February 16, 2020, 11:22:59 pm »
My experience with AMD CPUs and GPUs are that they are less stable/reliable. Of course I'm generalising here and my opinion is based on many years of largely anecdotal evidence over a wide range of models and I know it will cause a stir among the AMD community, but heat-related and general instability is not unknown in the AMD world.

In over 20 years in the IT industry and having built or worked on thousands of computers, I don't think I've ever had a single Intel processor fail on me, where as I can probably think of about 5-10 instances where an AMD processor has. I've also had my fair share of failed AMD GPU's.
There always seem to be plenty of people with similar opinions for brand X or against brand Y. Without much to go on those seem to be just opinions.

Sure, and ordinarily I would absolutely agree with you. I too am skeptical of anyone offering anecdotal evidence, but I think the opinion of an experienced person in the industry does carry some weight, as opposed to someone who might have built 10 computers in their life and just happen to like a particular brand "just because".

I fully admit that when I build a machine, it's absolutely going to be Intel based, but not only due to the past reliability issues involving AMD, but general compatibility with Linux and FreeBSD is also a big one for me. There is no compelling reason for me to switch to AMD. Have I recommended AMD machines to others in the past? Absolutely, but that largely comes down to their budget.
 

Offline Mr. Scram

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Re: Video editing on a budget.
« Reply #14 on: February 16, 2020, 11:46:45 pm »
Sure, and ordinarily I would absolutely agree with you. I too am skeptical of anyone offering anecdotal evidence, but I think the opinion of an experienced person in the industry does carry some weight, as opposed to someone who might have built 10 computers in their life and just happen to like a particular brand "just because".

I fully admit that when I build a machine, it's absolutely going to be Intel based, but not only due to the past reliability issues involving AMD, but general compatibility with Linux and FreeBSD is also a big one for me. There is no compelling reason for me to switch to AMD. Have I recommended AMD machines to others in the past? Absolutely, but that largely comes down to their budget.
You're very careful to correctly label your reports as anecdotal, only to then try and upsell it as something more. The reliability argument can be twisted in any way even with proper sources included. I could point at the woeful situation of Intel's hardware security and seemingly endless parade of vulnerabilities in their speculative threading or ME. I could point at Intel's chips that degrade over time or their SATA controllers that were outright broken. All of that's true and verifiable and not based on some handwavy self reporting. There's little doubt something similar could be done for AMD so it's best to stick to more factual and immediate matters. Even if we assume your report is on the nose the practical implication of a few defects in "over 20 years in the IT industry" is that it's so unlikely to happen as not to matter at all. What does matter is possibly limiting someone's options based on some anecdotal feelings which may either impact the budget or the performance of the hardware purchased. This kid needs decent hardware, not stories.
 

Offline Halcyon

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Re: Video editing on a budget.
« Reply #15 on: February 17, 2020, 12:53:36 am »
Sure, and ordinarily I would absolutely agree with you. I too am skeptical of anyone offering anecdotal evidence, but I think the opinion of an experienced person in the industry does carry some weight, as opposed to someone who might have built 10 computers in their life and just happen to like a particular brand "just because".

I fully admit that when I build a machine, it's absolutely going to be Intel based, but not only due to the past reliability issues involving AMD, but general compatibility with Linux and FreeBSD is also a big one for me. There is no compelling reason for me to switch to AMD. Have I recommended AMD machines to others in the past? Absolutely, but that largely comes down to their budget.
You're very careful to correctly label your reports as anecdotal, only to then try and upsell it as something more.

I say it how it is. I'm not trying to pass off my experiences as being some kind of solid scientific fact. Anecdotal doesn't mean that it's wrong or can be dismissed as being false, it's simply based on my experience. These forums are more than just what is evidence-based, I think expert opinions and experience matters quite a lot.

I'm not saying don't buy AMD. I'm just saying why I personally don't buy AMD. As I said, I have no compelling reason to change and cost alone is not an important factor for me.
 

Offline Mr. Scram

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Re: Video editing on a budget.
« Reply #16 on: February 17, 2020, 01:36:52 am »
I say it how it is. I'm not trying to pass off my experiences as being some kind of solid scientific fact. Anecdotal doesn't mean that it's wrong or can be dismissed as being false, it's simply based on my experience. These forums are more than just what is evidence-based, I think expert opinions and experience matters quite a lot.

I'm not saying don't buy AMD. I'm just saying why I personally don't buy AMD. As I said, I have no compelling reason to change and cost alone is not an important factor for me.
I'm not saying your statements are intentionally false but I am saying they are effectively meaningless for reasons discussed. Posting them is essentially just an attempt at skewing opinions ever so slightly based on nothing solid or of value to OP at all. If there was any kind of distinct difference there would be hard numbers. This isn't an industry where companies just guess at things when serious investments are at stake. Let's get back to factual matters and get this kid a decent computer. The first order of business is establishing a budget.
 

Offline Halcyon

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Re: Video editing on a budget.
« Reply #17 on: February 17, 2020, 02:21:50 am »
I say it how it is. I'm not trying to pass off my experiences as being some kind of solid scientific fact. Anecdotal doesn't mean that it's wrong or can be dismissed as being false, it's simply based on my experience. These forums are more than just what is evidence-based, I think expert opinions and experience matters quite a lot.

I'm not saying don't buy AMD. I'm just saying why I personally don't buy AMD. As I said, I have no compelling reason to change and cost alone is not an important factor for me.
I'm not saying your statements are intentionally false but I am saying they are effectively meaningless for reasons discussed. Posting them is essentially just an attempt at skewing opinions ever so slightly based on nothing solid or of value to OP at all. If there was any kind of distinct difference there would be hard numbers. This isn't an industry where companies just guess at things when serious investments are at stake. Let's get back to factual matters and get this kid a decent computer. The first order of business is establishing a budget.

I disagree. I'm not attempting to "skew" anything, what the OP ends up doing doesn't have any bearing on how I live my life in the slightest. I'm just speaking about my experiences (which also involves about 5-6 years of professional video production for theaters etc...). If you want to hear about my professional video production experience when I worked at both a community television station and Network Ten in Australia, all of their workflows were all Intel-based workstations, edit suites and servers (but that's starting to get a bit off-topic).

I think swapping stories is just as important as reading about the facts. If you come to an online forum to purely get facts which are evidence-based, peer reviewed or otherwise proven, then you're in the wrong place. Forums like this one are getting people with all kinds of experiences together to share their thoughts. Sure, sometimes it ends in tears, but that's life.

Feel free to disagree on my thoughts, I absolutely don't mind. But don't hide behind "it's not proven so therefore don't mention it".
 

Offline NiHaoMike

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Re: Video editing on a budget.
« Reply #18 on: February 17, 2020, 02:38:00 am »
The FX series was infamous for running hot which likely contributes to a higher failure rate. But that would not make a very good PC nowadays so the point is moot.
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Offline beanflying

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Re: Video editing on a budget.
« Reply #19 on: February 17, 2020, 03:04:10 am »
I was playing around with 1080P footage on an I3 with 8Gb of Ram (Old ex lease box with a very modest GPU) and it was Painful at best. At 720P you would likely be ok with or without a GPU but it would soon run out of legs.

So an old I5 or better ex lease and a 'reasonable' GPU (RX 580 or 590'ish) making sure the Power supply and case will cope with it is the cheap option. 8GB memory minimum would get him started and some ok gaming at 1080P.

For new the GPU requirements are much lower than for Gaming so buy what your budget can afford him (RX580 was handling 4K but sucked a bit for games). Memory 16GB of fairly fast preferably DDR4. Processor if you are building last years Ryzen 2600 still stacks up very well for video even toward 4K. B450 Motherboard will kill it and a 500Gb SSD plus some spinny storage for bulk. Costs of this with new gear circa $7-800 USD at a guess.

Servers are cheap but allow $20 for earmuffs  ::)
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Offline davelectronicTopic starter

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Re: Video editing on a budget.
« Reply #20 on: February 17, 2020, 03:07:30 am »
A lot to be going on there in reply's, i did think a server would be noisy but didn't realise the cores where low clock speeds. i
I would like to get him to build the pc with guidance. I dont want to sped a fortune until i know his serious about it. Workstations crossed my mind, but i have no idea if they are suitable or not
 

Offline davelectronicTopic starter

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Re: Video editing on a budget.
« Reply #21 on: February 17, 2020, 03:12:00 am »
 i didn't want to spend out on ddr4 hardware. is socket 775T intel with a core 2 quad worth considering ? 
 

Offline beanflying

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Re: Video editing on a budget.
« Reply #22 on: February 17, 2020, 03:35:29 am »
If you are buying new memory DDR4 is fairly well priced compared to not long ago. Video editing is a hog for memory and clock speed and cores help a lot. As the 2600 I mentioned in my last post is now 'old tech' they are popping up secondhand and even some systems in limited numbers are showing up in Oz as people chase better gaming PC's in particular.

Others might like to weigh in on the CPU/Board you are looking at I don't have any idea where in the food chain it fits. The issue I would see  with it is the complete lack of upgrade path later on. This is one of the issues with looking at older Intel CPU's.
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Offline NiHaoMike

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Re: Video editing on a budget.
« Reply #23 on: February 17, 2020, 03:49:29 am »
I was playing around with 1080P footage on an I3 with 8Gb of Ram (Old ex lease box with a very modest GPU) and it was Painful at best. At 720P you would likely be ok with or without a GPU but it would soon run out of legs.
If the editing is mostly splicing the video and the use of effects and transcoding is kept to a minimum, the requirements will decrease significantly.
i didn't want to spend out on ddr4 hardware. is socket 775T intel with a core 2 quad worth considering ? 
That's ancient, don't bother with anything older than Ivy Bridge.
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Offline Red Squirrel

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Re: Video editing on a budget.
« Reply #24 on: February 17, 2020, 03:53:12 am »
I do all my Youtube video editing on an i3 using Linux Mint and Kdenlive.   Sometimes I feel it's a bit limited in some respects compared to the pro grade stuff, but it's stable and it still does enough for my needs.    Even on my older lower end hardware the usability is fine and render times are ok.

I keep my videos relatively short though like 10-20 minutes so have not really tried super long videos yet.
 


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