Fast Computer Ideas?

Post by David Kaye
I'm getting into editing video in a big way. Typically if I'm authoring a
DVD it takes about 2 hours to convert an MP4 into the files that are used on
a DVD (.vob, etc), and then another 45 minutes to actually write to the DVD.
I guess I'm probably looking for a gaming machine or something. Ideas?
Windows environment.
Oh, and since we're at it, does anybody have pricing for Comcast commercial
service at about 30 or more mbps upload? My service has about 100 mbps
down, but a mere 5 up.
Thanks!

MPEG-2 doesn't lake too long to render even on today's desktops. It's a much simpler codec than MP4. DVD VOB files are MPEG-2. Did you try Handbrake? Much of these free ones (and some of the paid apps) use FFMpeg.

As for a machine it depends on your budget. I bought an iBuyPower game PC at Fry's right before Christmas. It's a mid-level machine which cost around $900. The video card is what makes a difference and it came with a GFX 960. Of course more cores and memory helps too. But it renders video very fast. Unlike off the shelf PCs the game PC companies encourage tweaking. This one is an Intel processor which I need one with because Google in their infinite wisdom only support Intel now on Windows for their virtual Android emulators. AMD game PCs are cheaper.

I use it not only for video but 3D graphics rendering. This little video didn't take long to render even at 4K which was what I uploaded to YouTube.

sms

2016-01-02 02:01:17 UTC

MPEG-2 doesn't lake too long to render even on today's desktops. It's a much simpler codec than MP4. DVD VOB files are MPEG-2. Did you try Handbrake? Much of these free ones (and some of the paid apps) use FFMpeg.
As for a machine it depends on your budget. I bought an iBuyPower game PC at Fry's right before Christmas. It's a mid-level machine which cost around $900. The video card is what makes a difference and it came with a GFX 960. Of course more cores and memory helps too. But it renders video very fast. Unlike off the shelf PCs the game PC companies encourage tweaking. This one is an Intel processor which I need one with because Google in their infinite wisdom only support Intel now on Windows for their virtual Android emulators. AMD game PCs are cheaper.
I use it not only for video but 3D graphics rendering. This little video didn't take long to render even at 4K which was what I uploaded to YouTube.
http://youtu.be/743CK6T7DsM

Video editing typically is done on a Xeon based machine with multiple CPUs.

The Mac Pro is actually quite a good deal, even if you end up installing
Windows on it, as many people do who are doing video editing.

There are HP machines for video editing but they typically run about
$6000, i.e.
<http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1205688-REG/hp_z840_series_turnkey_workstation.html>

n***@sbcglobal.net

2016-01-02 18:34:27 UTC

Post by sms

MPEG-2 doesn't lake too long to render even on today's desktops. It's a much simpler codec than MP4. DVD VOB files are MPEG-2. Did you try Handbrake? Much of these free ones (and some of the paid apps) use FFMpeg.
As for a machine it depends on your budget. I bought an iBuyPower game PC at Fry's right before Christmas. It's a mid-level machine which cost around $900. The video card is what makes a difference and it came with a GFX 960. Of course more cores and memory helps too. But it renders video very fast. Unlike off the shelf PCs the game PC companies encourage tweaking. This one is an Intel processor which I need one with because Google in their infinite wisdom only support Intel now on Windows for their virtual Android emulators. AMD game PCs are cheaper.
I use it not only for video but 3D graphics rendering. This little video didn't take long to render even at 4K which was what I uploaded to YouTube.
http://youtu.be/743CK6T7DsM

Video editing typically is done on a Xeon based machine with multiple CPUs.
The Mac Pro is actually quite a good deal, even if you end up installing
Windows on it, as many people do who are doing video editing.
There are HP machines for video editing but they typically run about
$6000, i.e.
<http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1205688-REG/hp_z840_series_turnkey_workstation.html>

Depends on if you are doing video editing full time. But if it is a part time deal rendering really doesn't take that long and a lot of consumer packages are quite good and don't need a $6000 machine.

The last time I paid $5k for a machine was for a Pentium Pro back around the mid-1990s. We had a visit from Intel marketing and I mentioned I had bought one and they asked why I had bought a server machine. For speed, mainly. Then I told them that computer people are like hot car enthusiasts. All they had to do was visit a computer club to find that out. Seemed they had not heard of the concept at the time.

sms

2016-01-02 20:59:50 UTC

On 1/2/2016 10:34 AM, ***@sbcglobal.net wrote:

<snip>

Post by n***@sbcglobal.net
Depends on if you are doing video editing full time. But if it is a part time deal rendering really doesn't take that long and a lot of consumer packages are quite good and don't need a $6000 machine.

True. My nephew does it almost full time, between movies he produces.
It's a good income especially if you can do it efficiently, which
requires a high-power machine. He uses a Mac Pro.

It's amazing that in L.A. so many studios contract out all their video
editing and are rather clueless about it.

n***@sbcglobal.net

2016-01-04 00:10:02 UTC

Post by sms
<snip>

True. My nephew does it almost full time, between movies he produces.
It's a good income especially if you can do it efficiently, which
requires a high-power machine. He uses a Mac Pro.
It's amazing that in L.A. so many studios contract out all their video
editing and are rather clueless about it.

Studio execs know how to talk to investors not technical people. I swear some of the small companies have their admins author the discs barely knowing what they are doing or even have them create masters for Netflix. @_@

David Kaye

2016-01-04 07:32:26 UTC

Post by n***@sbcglobal.net
Studio execs know how to talk to investors not technical people.

This is true in most technical industries. In broadcasting, for instance,
the GM and the CEO come up through sales, not through engineering.

Roy

2016-01-04 18:21:52 UTC

When I was buying servers, I always had good luck with Supermicro. Some
of these should be as fast as the Mac Pros and significantly cheaper.

http://www.supermicro.com/products/nfo/superworkstation.cfm

Julian Macassey

2016-01-04 21:26:34 UTC

Post by Roy
When I was buying servers, I always had good luck with Supermicro. Some
of these should be as fast as the Mac Pros and significantly cheaper.
http://www.supermicro.com/products/nfo/superworkstation.cfm

I have used Supermicro boards for some years. I have had
very good experience with them.

They are extensively used in science for serious
crunching. CERN is a customer or example.
o
i Locally two companies who can build what you need are ASA
and IX Systems.
o

IX systems
2490 Kruse Dr.
San Jose, CA 95131

Phone: 408 943 4100

https://www.ixsystems.com/

ASA
645 National Ave
Mountain View, CA 94043

Phone: 650 230 8000

http://www.asacomputers.com/home.php

--
"Every Hollywood film is a remake of a previous film… or a TV series everyone
hated in the 1960s." - Alan Moore, Guardian, Dec 12, 2012

n***@sbcglobal.net

2016-01-05 19:49:59 UTC

Post by n***@sbcglobal.net
Studio execs know how to talk to investors not technical people.

This is true in most technical industries. In broadcasting, for instance,
the GM and the CEO come up through sales, not through engineering.

And I've also found the reverse true with some broadcast engineers not understanding the business end of things.

David Kaye

2016-01-06 04:44:05 UTC

Post by n***@sbcglobal.net
And I've also found the reverse true with some broadcast engineers not
understanding
the business end of things.

Most definitely. Unless the CE has a specific budget to adhere to CE's
don't often look at balance sheets or P/Ls at all. On the other hand, sales
people's income are directly related to station income, so they become
versed in administration rather quickly.

b***@MIX.COM

2016-01-25 04:00:40 UTC

Post by sms
It's amazing that in L.A. so many studios contract out all their video
editing and are rather clueless about it.

The studios are many things, but clueless is not one of them. All the
post production houses work on flat rates, and the studios beat the shit
out of them with endless, idiotic changes that'd cost the studios real
money if they had to pay for it all themselves. This has led to more
than a few post houses going broke down here, including some of the real
big ones, like Rhythm & Hues.

Billy Y..

--
sub #'9+1 ,r0 ; convert ascii byte
add #9.+1 ,r0 ; to an integer
bcc 20$ ; not a number

b***@MIX.COM

2016-01-25 03:51:45 UTC

Post by sms
Video editing typically is done on a Xeon based machine with multiple CPUs.

There is also the option of editing a lower resolution copy (Avid's DNxHD-36
codec is quite popular) and then conforming the uncompressed (or not as heavily
compressed) video after the editing is done.

http://www.avid.com/US/industries/workflow/DNxHD-Codec

Post by sms
The Mac Pro is actually quite a good deal, even if you end up installing
Windows on it, as many people do who are doing video editing.

Avid's Media Composer runs fine on either OS. Starts at US$49 a month.

http://www.avid.com/US/Solutions/byNeed/video-editing.html#overview

There is probably more third-party stuff for Windows, though.

Post by sms
There are HP machines for video editing but they typically run about
$6000

If you going to spend that much, here's another vendor worth considering -

http://www.boxxtech.com/solutions/media-entertainment

Billy Y..

--
sub #'9+1 ,r0 ; convert ascii byte
add #9.+1 ,r0 ; to an integer
bcc 20$ ; not a number

David Kaye

2016-01-03 07:06:37 UTC

Post by n***@sbcglobal.net
MPEG-2 doesn't lake too long to render even on today's desktops. It's a
much simpler codec
than MP4. DVD VOB files are MPEG-2. Did you try Handbrake? Much of
these free ones
(and some of the paid apps) use FFMpeg.

Thanks. I'd never even heard of Handbrake. I'm downloading it and am going
to look at it. The trouble is that nearly all the source videos are MPEG4.

n***@sbcglobal.net

2016-01-04 00:06:48 UTC

Thanks. I'd never even heard of Handbrake. I'm downloading it and am going
to look at it. The trouble is that nearly all the source videos are MPEG4.

Sorry, I see Handbrake will just do the transcoding from MP4 to MPEG-2. I didn't know if you had an authoring tool or not but there are a bunch of free DVD (and BD) authoring apps for Windows. I have some commercial software for making DVDs and Blu-rays. The latter can be done for BD-ROM where you can even burn HD video to a DVD disc and it will play in HD. This was somewhat missing in the HD-DVD format (you could burn HD videos that were up to 20 minutes though on a DVD). But the Blu-ray group was run by Sony and Panasonic and obviously it helps if your HD consumer camcorder users can make Blu-rays of their movies that will even work if burned to a DVD.

David Kaye

2016-01-04 07:31:14 UTC

Post by n***@sbcglobal.net
Sorry, I see Handbrake will just do the transcoding from MP4 to MPEG-2. I
didn't know
if you had an authoring tool or not but there are a bunch of free DVD (and
BD)
authoring apps for Windows.

I know this sounds lame to any software geek, but I've been using Windows
Movie Maker with good success. Unfortunately when I upgraded from Windows 7
to 10, MS decided to remove the DVD burn part of the software (they've also
removed the games).

So, now I use MovieMaker for editing, then save the project file, then
create an MP4 from the files. Most of the files I'm using as source
material are MP4. I'm aware that the MP4 designation refers to a wrapper
and not an actual codec, but when the source is MP4, or shall I say "MP4",
the saving to the MP4 file is faster than when I have MP2, AVI, or other
formats as source.

Even so, it still can take 45 minutes to an hour to produce the MP4 file for
a 90 minute DVD.

After that I now use DVD Flick to create the VOB files and burn them to DVD.
This can take an hour to 90 minutes or so. So, after I save my project
file, the time to create the finished DVD can be over 3 hours sometimes.
This is why I'm concerned about processor speed and not things like GPUs,
etc.

n***@sbcglobal.net

2016-01-04 20:02:03 UTC

I know this sounds lame to any software geek, but I've been using Windows
Movie Maker with good success. Unfortunately when I upgraded from Windows 7
to 10, MS decided to remove the DVD burn part of the software (they've also
removed the games).
So, now I use MovieMaker for editing, then save the project file, then
create an MP4 from the files. Most of the files I'm using as source
material are MP4. I'm aware that the MP4 designation refers to a wrapper
and not an actual codec, but when the source is MP4, or shall I say "MP4",
the saving to the MP4 file is faster than when I have MP2, AVI, or other
formats as source.
Even so, it still can take 45 minutes to an hour to produce the MP4 file for
a 90 minute DVD.
After that I now use DVD Flick to create the VOB files and burn them to DVD.
This can take an hour to 90 minutes or so. So, after I save my project
file, the time to create the finished DVD can be over 3 hours sometimes.
This is why I'm concerned about processor speed and not things like GPUs,
etc.

My 5 year old Acer M3300 with Windows 7 never took anywhere near this long and I paid ~$500 for it at Frys. Here's some free DVD authoring apps for Windows you might want to try:

http://www.techradar.com/us/news/software/applications/best-free-dvd-burning-software-1141938\

With the new machine I might not even have time to get a cup of coffee. ;-)

sms

2016-01-04 22:12:20 UTC

I know this sounds lame to any software geek, but I've been using Windows
Movie Maker with good success. Unfortunately when I upgraded from Windows 7
to 10, MS decided to remove the DVD burn part of the software (they've also
removed the games).
So, now I use MovieMaker for editing, then save the project file, then
create an MP4 from the files. Most of the files I'm using as source
material are MP4. I'm aware that the MP4 designation refers to a wrapper
and not an actual codec, but when the source is MP4, or shall I say "MP4",
the saving to the MP4 file is faster than when I have MP2, AVI, or other
formats as source.
Even so, it still can take 45 minutes to an hour to produce the MP4 file for
a 90 minute DVD.
After that I now use DVD Flick to create the VOB files and burn them to DVD.
This can take an hour to 90 minutes or so. So, after I save my project
file, the time to create the finished DVD can be over 3 hours sometimes.
This is why I'm concerned about processor speed and not things like GPUs,
etc.

http://www.techradar.com/us/news/software/applications/best-free-dvd-burning-software-1141938\
With the new machine I might not even have time to get a cup of coffee. ;-)

Some movie editing software does make use of GPUs, so the GPU is
actually rather important in terms of performance.

I suggest Sony Vegas to move beyond iMovie.

I ran into the problem that many of my neighbors in Cupertino have run
into. The middle schools have some video projects that the kids do. They
work on them at school on Macs. Then they bring the iMovie .MOV file
home and want to work on it at home. But almost no one has a Mac at
home. I was sure someone in the group of four kids would have had a Mac
at home, this is Cupertino for gawds sake, but no. I thought about
building a Hackintosh or buying a Mac Mini but that was too much money
or too involved.

I just had to find some movie software that could read (easy) and write
(hard) iMovie .MOV files on the PC. Sony Vegas was the only one I could
find, and it was not free. It is much more full featured than iMovie but
it has a steep learning curve.

The current version of Sony Vegas is $30 for the Academic version.
<http://www.genesis-technologies.com/cart/Sony_Vegas_Movie_Studio_13_Academic_Government_for_Windows_p10492.html>
and $57 for the regular version <http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00I3MSBC6>

n***@sbcglobal.net

2016-01-05 19:49:10 UTC

Post by sms

I know this sounds lame to any software geek, but I've been using Windows
Movie Maker with good success. Unfortunately when I upgraded from Windows 7
to 10, MS decided to remove the DVD burn part of the software (they've also
removed the games).
So, now I use MovieMaker for editing, then save the project file, then
create an MP4 from the files. Most of the files I'm using as source
material are MP4. I'm aware that the MP4 designation refers to a wrapper
and not an actual codec, but when the source is MP4, or shall I say "MP4",
the saving to the MP4 file is faster than when I have MP2, AVI, or other
formats as source.
Even so, it still can take 45 minutes to an hour to produce the MP4 file for
a 90 minute DVD.
After that I now use DVD Flick to create the VOB files and burn them to DVD.
This can take an hour to 90 minutes or so. So, after I save my project
file, the time to create the finished DVD can be over 3 hours sometimes.
This is why I'm concerned about processor speed and not things like GPUs,
etc.

http://www.techradar.com/us/news/software/applications/best-free-dvd-burning-software-1141938\
With the new machine I might not even have time to get a cup of coffee. ;-)

Some movie editing software does make use of GPUs, so the GPU is
actually rather important in terms of performance.
I suggest Sony Vegas to move beyond iMovie.
I ran into the problem that many of my neighbors in Cupertino have run
into. The middle schools have some video projects that the kids do. They
work on them at school on Macs. Then they bring the iMovie .MOV file
home and want to work on it at home. But almost no one has a Mac at
home. I was sure someone in the group of four kids would have had a Mac
at home, this is Cupertino for gawds sake, but no. I thought about
building a Hackintosh or buying a Mac Mini but that was too much money
or too involved.
I just had to find some movie software that could read (easy) and write
(hard) iMovie .MOV files on the PC. Sony Vegas was the only one I could
find, and it was not free. It is much more full featured than iMovie but
it has a steep learning curve.
The current version of Sony Vegas is $30 for the Academic version.
<http://www.genesis-technologies.com/cart/Sony_Vegas_Movie_Studio_13_Academic_Government_for_Windows_p10492.html>
and $57 for the regular version <http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00I3MSBC6>

I've used it but found it not very user friendly. Currently I'm using the MAGIX products where I've gotten good upgrade deals. It's an inexpensive product and they have a 30 day free trial. I've also used ULead (now owned by Corel) and Pinnacle products (owned by Avid). And laughingly back in the day some of the Sonic products and even the one Sonic sued and then Apple bought it for the code (probably became Final Cut).

I also paid an extra $1000 to get a Pioneer consumer DVD burner on a Compaq machine when those burners first became available. I had a contract project that required DVDs and it often took a week to get a DVD burned from the client. Having a burner solved and blanks from Apple were $25 afor a box of 5.

But I would start first trying the free software. Most use FFMpeg or AVConv to encode. Unless David has a line out the door for clients wanting DVD authoring it's probably not worth investing much at this time.

sms

2016-01-06 21:40:11 UTC

Post by n***@sbcglobal.net
I've used it but found it not very user friendly.

That's true, but as you move up in versions it has features comparable
to Final Cut Pro. Since you can't run Final Cut on a PC, if you want a
program for non-professional video editing but that is more powerful
than Movie Maker or the other consumer level programs, you don't have
many choices.

n***@sbcglobal.net

2016-01-06 22:14:44 UTC