How to pick and create
the best computer system for editing high
definition video
High-Performance Systems
for High-Def Editing
by Douglas Dixon
www.manifest-tech.com
System Requirements for HD Video
Software
Recommended System Configurations
Base System
Processor
Memory
Hard Disk
Graphics and Display
Editing HD
Only a few years ago, we
were struggling with configuring desktop
systems to support editing DV video, with
its then-huge demands for real-time video
capture, streaming to hard disk, and
video-rate decompression and processing.
Today, even mainstream consumer systems
don't break a sweat for editing
standard-definition video. But we've also
moved on -- and now we're back demanding
more with the step up to high-def video.
While high-end consumer
systems can handle advanced SD editing and
some HD work, if you're getting serious
about video (and DVD and animation), you
should think about moving up to a
workstation-class system. After all, HD is a
big jump in the stress on a system -- going
from DV (720 x 480) to HDV (720p, 1280 x 720
and 1080i, 1440 x 1080), much less to full
HD (1920 x 1080) with 6 times the amount of
pixels.
So what kind of system
should you be looking at to edit HD video,
and what are the best cost / performance
trade-offs in today's market? We'll take a
look at the recommendations from video
editing software vendors including Adobe,
Avid, and Apple, and the kinds of equipment
available from vendors including Apple,
Dell, and HP. We'll also focus on desktop
(actually floor tower) systems here,
although it's now quite feasible to equip
notebooks for SD and HD editing on the go.
Of course, the bottom line
for you depends on your budget, needs, and
expectations for future growth. And the
options and pricing listed here will
continue to change quickly. But, at this
point in time, here are some of the key
issues and options for you to think about.
You can get a good sense of
the best configurations for both SD and HD
editing from the system requirements listed
for the editing software including Apple
Final Cut Studio, Adobe Premiere Pro,
and Avid Xpress Pro.
Apple Final Cut Studio - Adobe
Premiere Pro - Avid Xpress Pro
For example, the minimum
requirements for the Apple Final Cut
Studio suite are for a 1.25 GHz or
faster processor, a PowerPC G4, PowerPC G5,
Intel Core Duo, or Intel Xeon (www.apple.com/finalcutstudio/finalcutpro/specs.html).
Apple starts with 1 GB of RAM, recommending
2 GB for compressed HD and uncompressed SD
formats, and 4 GB for uncompressed HD
sources.
Similarly, the Adobe
Premiere Pro system requirements for DV
editing start with an Intel Pentium 4 at 2
GHz, 1 GB of RAM, and a dedicated 7,200 rpm
hard drive (www.adobe.com/products/premiere/systemreqs).
For HDV, Adobe recommends stepping up to a
3.4 GHz processor and 2 GB of RAM. And for
full HD, dual 2.8 GHz Intel Xeon processors
and striped disk array storage (RAID 0).
The Avid Xpress Pro
minimum system requirements are similar,
with further details on qualified graphics
cards and PCI FireWire / 1394 cards (www.avid.com/products/xpresspro/specs.asp).
Clearly, your wishlist
should include a multi-core processor over 2
GHz, possibly a workstation-class Xeon, plus
2 to 4 GB of memory.
But what system should you
configure with these options? Again, these
software companies have developed
configurations of specific systems that have
been qualified for SD and HD editing using
their software. (Since prices and
configurations change quickly, numbers here
are approximate.)
On the Macintosh
platform, the Apple Mac Pro system is
built for these kinds of applications. Apple
lists a suggested base configuration with
two 2.66GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon processors
on the Apple Store site (around US $2500),
with additional build-to-order options
Apple Mac Pro
Adobe lists standard
turnkey configurations on its Adobe
OpenHD site, with optimized systems for
each type of production workflow, including
the hardware platform and capture cards (www.adobe.com/adobeopenhd/certified_solutions.html).
For HDV editing, Adobe lists
three desktop systems: Dell Precision 490
Workstation (around $5,950), Dell
Precision 690 Workstation ($6,450), and
HP xw4400 Workstation ($5,350). These
are workstation-class systems, with
dual-core Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4 GHz or Intel
Xeon 3 GHz processors, 4GB DDR2 memory, two
hard disks (160 GB 7200 RPM SATA system
drive and 500 GB 7200 RPM SATA media storage
drive), and 256 MB NVIDIA Quadro FX3450 /
FX3500 graphics cards.
Adobe OpenHD Partners
Avid also provides an
extensive list of qualified workstations for
Xpress Pro, both PC and Mac (www.avid.com/products/xpresspro/specs.asp).
For the Mac, Avid lists the Apple Mac Pro
with two Dual-Core 2.66 GHz or higher, as
well as Apple Power Macs, and even iMacs.
And for the PC, these include extensive
lists of Dell Precision workstations,
HP xw workstations, and the IBM
Intellistation ZPro.
HP xw Workstations
What you are seeing with
these systems is a focus on
workstation-class performance like the
Dell Precision line (www.dell.com/precision).
These systems are designed for stressful
applications including moving HD video, and
feature dual- and even quad-core processors
(Intel Xeon and Core 2), high performance
with DDR-2 memory and PCI Express I/O,
integrated high-speed SATA (and SAS) disk
drives with terabyte capacity and RAID
support, and professional graphics designed
for markets like industrial design and
engineering.
Dell Precision 490
But what do all these
acronyms mean, and how can you choose
between all the different options for
processor, memory, hard disk, graphics, and
other system components? Let's next drill
down into each of these areas, using Apple
and Dell's online configurations for as
references for current options and pricing.
The first step in
configuring a system is to choose the basic
platform and operating system. On the Mac,
you should go with the latest version of the
Intel-based Apple Mac Pro with Mac
OS X, as Apple has obviously optimized
for its best platform. On the PC, companies
like Adobe and Apple support both
Microsoft Windows XP and the new
Windows Vista, but XP is still the most
stable platform, as support software and
hardware drivers are still being shaken out
for Vista.
While Microsoft is pushing
Vista for new consumer systems, companies
like Dell still offer XP (and even Red Hat
Linux) on the Precision workstation line,
and also offer XP and Vista 64-bit editions,
although today's application software cannot
take advantage of them.
For this price comparison,
we'll start out with two systems.
- The suggested Apple Mac
Pro configuration comes with two
dual-core processors at around $2500.
- The base Dell Precision
Workstation 490 MiniTower with 32-bit
Windows XP starts at $1,760 before our
suggested upgrades.
Slots
These workstation systems
also come with a mix of PCI and
PCI Express (PCI-e) slots for expansion
cards (and there's also the previous PCI
Extended, PCI-X). PCI Express is
bidirectional, and faster then the older PCI
and AGP interfaces, as one card can support
1 to 32 lanes at 250 MB/sec each, up to 8
GB/sec. PCI Express x1 is about twice as
fast as PCI, and PCI Express x8 is around
the speed of the fastest AGP. (See
PCI-SIG, Peripheral Component
Interconnect Special Interest Group,
www.pcisig.com.)
PCI-SIG - PCI Express - PCI-X 2.0
You'll want a mix of these
slots, including some PCI for legacy and
lower-speed devices. The Avid
suggested configuration, for example, uses
PCI for FireWire / 1394, PCI Express x8 for
additional FireWire / 1394 and fibre storage
interfaces, PCI-X for optional SCSI and
accelerator cards, and PCI Express x16 for
the graphics card.
Key Factors
As described by Adobe
for its new Creative Suite 3 applications,
the key factors that affect system
performance are memory, processor, graphics
hardware, and storage speed. These affect
different parts of the system performance:
- Memory provides
general performance improvements, especially
when running multiple applications or
working with large projects. You'll see
better playback performance and
responsiveness with more memory.
- The number of
processors and their speed also affects
overall system performance. Raw processor
speed will help with all operations, while a
smaller subset of operations will be
improved by having multiple processors or
cores available: the key improvements in the
latter case will be with rendering,
encoding, and some playback performance.
- Graphics hardware
is used during playback to improve the frame
rate of playback, and the number of effects
that can be rendered simultaneously to the
screen. Premiere Pro does not currently use
the GPU for rendering or encoding, so if you
will spend a lot of time doing these
operations you may see less of a performance
boost.
- Storage speed will
directly affect the number and size of the
streams of video and audio that you can play
simultaneously through the system. For
example, uncompressed HD requires a
significantly higher data rate than DV.
The best choice is usually a
well-balanced system that combines
components that match closely in their
capabilities. There's usually little point
in maxing out one part of the system while
skimping on another.
We'll start configuring with
the processor. The marketing wars over raw
speed, the MHz and then GHz wars of the past
several years, are pretty much over as
systems have leveled out at 2 to 3 GHz.
Pushing processor speed further just pushes
the laws of physics, using too much power
and generating too much heat, raising cost
and noise for fans. So Intel and AMD have
re-focused on power-conserving designs that
actually turn off sections of the chip when
they are not in use. Intel's new designs,
for example, deliver 40% more performance
with 40% less power usage.
Instead, new hardware has
accelerated performance by offering
multiple processing units, so a single
machine could run multiple applications at
the same time (instead of swapping between
them), and multi-taking applications could
divide up their work into independent
parallel pieces (like compressing or
decompressing blocks of a video frame). This
was first supported by the Intel
Hyper-Threading technology, which was an
interim technology that helped application
developers plan for the multi-processor
future by providing multiple virtual threads
of execution.
But now as chip technology
has further shrunk die sizes, we have
reached the age of multiple processors,
or cores, on a single chip, with dual
and now quad cores. And why stop there --
you also can add multiple processor chips
for additional power.
Processor improvement is
incremental; you won't see all applications
suddenly run 2X quicker with a 2X faster
processor, but you will see visible
improvements. And multiple cores can really
help with complex video processing tasks, as
today's applications now take full advantage
of multiple cores.
For example, Intel
shows video processing running 38% faster
from processor design improvements in moving
from the Pentium D to the next generation of
Code 2 Dual processors, and 112% for
Core 2 Quad (www.intel.com/performance).
Similarly, Apple benchmarks a 3 GHz
quad-core Xeon Mac Pro system as up to 2x
faster than the Power Mac G5 Quad, and an
eight-core 3 GHz Mac Pro system as up to
1.4x faster than quad-core (www.apple.com/macpro/intel.html).
Intel Core2 Extreme Quad-Core microprocessor
To outfit your system's
processing power, then, find the sweet spot
in the price / performance curve in order to
to buy the biggest jump in performance for
an incremental addition to the cost.
The base Apple Mac Pro
configuration comes with a hefty two 2.66
GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon processors. This is
a good sweet spot: stepping down to 2.0 GHz
saves only $300, stepping up to 3.0 GHz adds
$800, and jumping to two 3.0 GHz quad-core
Xeons adds $1500.
The base Dell Precision
configuration is a Dual-Core Intel Xeon at
1.60 GHz. With today's price curves, it
makes sense to step up to a faster processor
for a couple hundred dollars (there a range
of options for your budget, but say 2.33 GHz
for $260), while 3.00 GHz jumps to $930. But
again a better option could be to move to a
Quad-Core chip with double the processors,
1.86 GHz for $360 if not 2.66 GHz for $1290.
Then for a further speed-up
you can always come back and add a second
Dual / Quad core processor. Today a
Dual-Core Xeon 2.00 GHz will cost $350, and
a Quad-Core 2.66 GHz will cost $1640, but
prices should have come down by the time
you're ready for a nice upgrade.
The Apple Mac Pro
supports up to 16 GHz of memory in eight
slots, although the current 32-bit
applications and operating systems (like Mac
OS X and Windows XP / Vista only really
support 4 GB. The new Mac OS X Leopard
will support 64-bit (www.apple.com/macosx/leopard/64bit.html),
and some applications like Motion can take
advantage of more than 4 GB or memory.
Workstation memory is
typically DDR2 SDRAM FBD memory.
That's a lot of acronyms that mean fast,
reliable memory -- fast Synchronous
Dynamic Random-Access Memory (SDRAM),
with more reliable Fully Buffered DIMM (FBD)
technology, running with Double Data
Rate-2 (DDR-2) technology for a 4X
speed-up over conventional RAM (www.memforum.org).
The base Apple Mac Pro
system comes with 1 GHz of DDR2 fully
buffered ECC RAM. At today's prices it's
definitely worth a step-up to 2 GB for $300
if not 4 GB for $700. Just leave some memory
slots free so you can dream about future
upgrades like 8 GB ($1700) and 16 GB
($4500).
The base Dell Precision
system comes with 1 GHz of DDR2 SDRAM FBD
memory. Again, stepping to 2 GB for $160 if
not 4 GB for $620 will be worth the price --
you'll see the improvement as you load up
multiple applications from these editing
suites, much less use components like
Adobe's Dynamic Link so you can have After
Effects rendering compositions to feed
real-time previews in Premiere Pro, much
less with Encore doing DVD compression in
the background.
The big news in hard disks
in the past couple of years has been the
mainstreaming of the SATA (Serial ATA)
format, which was designed to replace the
older ATA and SCSI formats, offering higher
performance with ease of connection (SATA-IO,
Serial ATA International Organization,
www.sata-io.org).
The Apple Mac Pro
includes four 7200 rpm SATA 3 Gb/s hard
drive bays, offering up to 3 terabytes of
data storage. The base system has one 250 GB
drive, with tempting upgrades to 500 GB for
$130 and 750 GB for $300. But your money is
better spent adding at least one separate
large data drive -- you can add up to three
more drives, 500 GB for $330 or 750 GB for
$500.
Dell features
second-generation SATA drives that
communicate at a rate of 3.0 Gb/s, with a
maximum actual bandwidth of 300 MB/s per
device. The base configuration has an 80 GB
main boot hard drive, with an obvious step
up to 250 GB for another $80.
But video editing really
requires that second large drive dedicated
to video storage and transfer, and not
slowed by application or operating system
access. You can add a second 250 GB drive
for $230, or more like 500 GB for $460, if
not 750 GB for $630.
Dell also offers
first-generation 1.5 Gb/s SATA that have
been boosted to better performance because
they rotate at 10,000 rpm (from 7200 rpm) --
but these are more expensive not available
in higher capacities.
Another developing
alternative is SAS hard drives (Serial
Attached SCSI), which build on the
enterprise performance and reliability of
SCSI while taking advantage of the benefits
of a serial interface like SATA. SAS is also
rated at 3.0 Gb/s, but is bi-directional for
better performance with multiple devices.
The bottom line is that SAS is more suitable
for enterprise use like an always-active
server, with better reliability and longer
mean time between failures, but SATA is
still great for video editing type uses, and
is less expensive and available in higher
capacities. While you can mix SAS and SATA
drives, adding SAS in the Dell line requires
a separate SAS controller ($150), and the
drives are available in up to only 300 GB
for $650.
As you add multiple drives,
you also can set up your system with a
RAID (Redundant Array of Independent
Disks) configuration, with RAID 0
striping the data across multiple discs for
better performance, RAID 1 mirroring
the data for redundancy, and RAID 5
for a combination of both with striping plus
distributed parity information. While it's
tempting to set up a two-drive system with a
RAID 0 performance boost, you loose the
separation of the system and data disks (you
can't just wipe the data disk for a new
project), and you take the risk that one
disk failure will cause the catastrophic
loss of all your data. SATA speeds really
should be enough for HD editing with one
additional disk, and you then can bump up to
multiple data discs with software RAID, or
step up to a dedicated external disk storage
system with hardware RAID like the Apple
XServe.
Finally, once you've
configured your ideal video editing system,
don't scrimp on the graphics card and video
displays. These workstations come with
ATI or NVIDIA PCI Express x16
graphics cards, typically supporting two
displays and both analog VGA and digital DVI
format (www.nvidia.com).
Depending on the
application, a graphics processor (GPU) can
provide significant performance boots by
off-loading processing from the CPU, for
operations like video decode/encode,
transformations and filters, and blending.
For example, Apple Motion is completely GPU-based,
doing real-time filtering and shading in the
graphics processor.
The graphics cards for the
Apple Mac Pro system support up to
two displays including at least one 30-inch
Apple Cinema HD Display. The base system has
a NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT 256MB
(single-link DVI/dual-link DVI), or you can
add up to four cards to power an array of
displays simultaneously for large display
walls.
On the Dell Precision,
you can step up from a 128 MB NVIDIA
Quadro NVS 285 to a recommended 256 MB
card like the NVIDIA Quadro FX 3450
for $490, adding PCIe x16 speed and hardware
support for 2D and 3D graphics.
Then you'll want two
monitors to better spread around your work.
For example, a 24-inch Apple Cinema
monitor with 1920x1200 pixels can show full
HD frames at full resolution (1920 x 1080).
Apple LCD displays feature FireWire and USB
2.0 ports. Apple offers the 20-inch Apple
Cinema display for $600, the 23-inch Apple
Cinema HD Display for $900, and the 30-inch
for $1800.
Apple Mac Pro with widescreen display
Dell offers a 20-inch
flat panel monitor for $450 or widescreen
for $400, and a 24-inch widescreen for $670.
Here again you can start with one monitor,
perhaps add a second old monitor, and
upgrade to a second bigger display as you
go.
So that's the picture on
configuring a system for HD editing, at
least with today's technology and options.
You can check out the basic system
requirements for your preferred video
editing software, and use the recommended
system configurations as a starting point.
Then tweak the configuration to fit your
needs, allocating your budget to bulk up key
components like the processor, memory, and
hard disk to fit both your current plans and
to give headroom for the future.
Also think about support for
your system. Apple offers the AppleCare
Protection Plan to extends its 90 days
of complimentary support and one-year
warranty to up to three years for $250. And
there's the new Apple One to One
personal training offering through its Apple
stores -- Individual sessions customized to
your needs, up to on hour a week for a full
year for $99 (www.apple.com/retail/onetoone).
The base Dell Precision
system includes 3 year next business day
on-site support, with options for advanced
phone support for $100, same-day service for
$400, and 4 years of coverage. Dell also
offers on-site system setup options starting
at $150.
So pull the trigger on the
purchase and step up to the full-powered
system you really need. Of course prices
will drop the next day, and a new product
line will be announced the next week, and
totally new technology will appear in the
next month -- but meanwhile you can be
effective and productive on your new video
editing workstation.
Manifest
Technology®
Copyright 1999-2007,
Douglas Dixon, All Rights Reserved
Manifest Technology is a registered
trademark of Douglas Dixon
