Unless otherwise noted all text, pictures, captures and illustrations are by Mike Strong. Copyright 2003 - 2017 Mike Strong, all rights reserved.
Video Editing

Video Editing Computer

Famous last words, "All you need is ..."

Actually, we can get away with some pretty minimal equipment but let's look at the computer from the standpoint of the editing software, capture software and save-to-tape software. These normally reside in the same software package. In the case of our editor the capture and save-to-tape are part of the same window which pops up for the capture function.

The heaviest demands on equipment are those needs which have to take place in real time, capture and recording. In capture we play the tape from our camcorder directly into the computer. The computer has to be able to handle the amount of data as fast as it is loaded from the camera. The other side of this is recording back to tape. The computer has to be able to deliver the data fast enough to keep up with the camera's demands.

Things that make our PC faster

Memory

The more memory (RAM, random access memory) the faster most operations in a computer, depending on what kinds of operations. In terms of video editing RAM is probably more important for regular editing. Capture needs raw CPU and Drive speed.

CPU Speed

This is what is rated as the computer's speed. It is the processor's speed. This is not the sole arbiter of speed in a computer but it is at the center of all data handling. In terms of video editing CPU speed is probably most important for rapid rendering.

Hard Drive

The keywords here are fast and large and contiguous.

Large: Video takes a LOT of disk space, in the neighborhood of 3.7 Mebabytes per second. One minute can easily be more than 220 megabytes. An hour can be 13 or 14 gigabytes. And you still need a lot of working space for the finished files. So you need the largest hard disk you can afford. V3.7 Mebabytes per second

Fast: The faster the disk turns the faster it can lay down the megabytes of data. For video that means that hard drives having 7,200 rpm should be your minimum drive. 5,400 rpm won't really do but if that is where you are you can get by for now with shorter captures, assuming that you are not dropping frames. Anyway, before you go into debt for new drives try the ones you have. Remember, we are trying to do this inexpensively.

Contiguous: Files on disk drives quickly turn into little hop-scotching pieces of data strewn all around the disk. Unlike regular physical items in a room, files on disk are divided into segments. When the segments are all together - contiguous - the hard drive can scoop up the information without having to change locations on the disk. This saves a lot of time and makes reads and writes a lot faster. If the file frows larger than the current location of segments on disk some other location has to be found in which to continue the data - similar to continuing a magazine article in the back pages of the magazine. When this happens the file is said to be "fragmented." De-fragging a drive re-arranges all those "continued" file segments into segments which are in contact with each other, contiguous.

You should run de-frag a lot when you are saving video.

Fast Buss

A buss (two s's) is the main electrical connection path. In the case of computers the buss is the set of connectors on the motherboard into which the various cards are plugged, such as the video card, the sound card and the Firewire card. The buss has a speed at which it operates (not the same as the CPU speed). The faster the buss the faster it transmits your data. Fast is good. Faster is better.

Cable

You will need a firewire cable. There are two types of connectors for firewire, a 6-pin connector and a four-pin connector. Usually the 6-pin connector plugs into a desktop computer's firewire card. It looks almost like a USB connector except that one end of the plug is squared off the and the other is peaked like a church window. The small 4-pin connector is normally plugged into the camera side. If you have a laptop computer it will have a small 4-pin connector.

So to connect a desktop and a camera you need a 4-pin to 6-pin cable. To connect a laptop and a camera you need a 4-pin to 4-pin cable. (Also: To connect a camera to a camera you need a 4-pin to 4-pin cable.) In a few cases, such as some scanners you will need a 6-pin to a 6-pin cable.

Capture Card

To capture video you need a capture card in your computer. In a desktop this is a card you plug into the motherboard. On a laptop look for the small 1394 connector (a four-pin connector).

Firewire will drop information into your computer at a rate of 400 mips (megabytes per second). It could also be a USB connection. USB version 1.0 is much slower than Firewire and usually this means that the video can only be captured in smaller size and perhaps a reduced frame rate.

USB version 2.0 is (in numbers) faster than Firewire. USB 2.0 runs at 480 mips. However, the Firewire runs independently of the CPU and can sustain high speeds even when their is other data traffic in your computer. USB, however, can get interrrupted or slowed by other computer applications and its 480 mips may turn into less than 400 mips. So the choice, for now at least, is still Firewire.

Sound Card

For our purposes any sound card that comes with your computer will suffice. But I should note that the ability of a sound card to sample sound at a high rate and a high bit depth will provide superior sound, assuming that the sound was recorded with that much fidelity by the camera.

Because most cameras are probably not sampling much above 16-bit and you may not have any choice about sample rate we won't worry about the most expensive sound cards. Just use what you have. 12-bit sound and 16-bit sound are the usual bit-depth choices with a sampling rate of 48 KHz available on consumer cameras. This is considered "CD quality." The numbers by themselves don't tell the full story but this is fine for us.

If you are connecting a mixer to your computer for recording sound (such as instruments or singing) then the high-dollar sound card pays off because you will be able to record the full values of the sound fed into your computer. That assumes you will be reproducing the sound such that the full range is utilized.

Limit The Number of Software Services

All computers have a number of programs running at the same time. Each program is normally run in sequence. Program A gets a few CPU cycles to do things. Then Program B does a few things. Then Program C does a few things. and so forth until the whole list of running programs is completed at which point the process starts again from the start of the list. This is called time sharing.

Because the switching between programs is so fast and is behind the scenes it looks to us as if they are all running at the same time. In truth the operating system keeps switching down a list of programs (the task list). Normally, we would never notice this. But programs which need all the CPU cycles they can get for certain tasks, such as video captures, do notice if we have too many other programs running in the environment. Essentially we get a traffic jam.

So, if you are dedicating your machine to video you need to keep it as clear of non-related programs as possible. Network connections can be bad, though not necessarily. Programs which make connections elsewhere, such as instant messanger programs can sap needed CPU cycles from your captures or records-to-tape.

If your machine is not dedicated to video, you may need to shut down as many of the programs as possible before your capture, record or edit session. You can use Windows Task Manager for this purpose. Usually editing is not as critical except for real-time.