What would be the minimum requirements for a PC to capture video grade AVI files? (1 Viewer)

[Keith Paynter]

While my current computer does well creating mpeg video (PII-233, 128m RAM), so i can create my own VCD's, I'm looking to basically have a digital video suite for home video editing of things like wedding videos, etc. I'm planning to use Adobe Premiere 6.
Speed suggestions, from a minimal standpoint - I'm aware that I will need a bigger hard drive.
Thanks.
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"Patriotism swells in the heart of the American bear."

 

[Ken Chan]

For capturing, the only relevant speed is sustained disk write speed. I captured full-frame (704x480) AVIs using minimum hardware MJPEG compression, about 5MB or 7MB per second, on a Pentium 166MMX. That was with a SCSI drive, though.
You could probably do that with a good IDE drive (probably with DMA), but I didn't want to fiddle with it.
Once you get into editing though, the CPU can't get fast enough (or at least won't for the forseeable future).
//Ken

 

[Eric Samonte]

I used to play around with a Fast Video digital editing suite at work once and that was a good 5 years ago. It had 2 SCSI AV drives and it worked fine with a Pentium 100.
Today, I mess around with Adobe Premiere 5.0 with my PII350. I takes me a good 2 hours to preview a 2 minute clip. Suffice it to say that the faster the CPU the better for video editing. And that also goes for ur HD (7200), RAM ,etc.
So the highest CPU would be recommended, tons of RAM, good card for 2D with at least 64MB of vidRAM and a monster of a HD. With the prices of PCs going down at a phenomenal rate, u'd have a great digital edit box for less than $1000.
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Eric Samonte
Dito sa Pilipinas..may Hom Tiyeter rin kami!

 

[CRyan]

As FAST as you can afford. That simple. It takes forever to render good quality video! Decent editing software will let your capture at a lesser quality of course and then render at full quality when you are done editing. That rendering process can and will take hours with a slow processor. Just horrible and it takes the fun right out of it.
Rethinking about your original post... It is really hard to discuss from a minimal standpoint. It just depends on how long you are willing to wait for it to finish. ATA100 7200rpm HD at > 40GB would be a minimum. 256MB Ram would be a minimum as far as I am concerned. Precessor speed is simply up to you, but I would not do it below 1Ghz and still call it fun!
C. Ryan
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http://www.elitestoragedesigns.com/RyanOAR.bmp
[Edited last by CRyan on October 04, 2001 at 12:49 PM]