Build for video editing?

[dizmo]

I'm looking to piece together a build for video editing. It'll likely use either Adobe Premier or Sony Vegas, if it matters at all.

It's for a friend who's looking to get into making YouTube videos. She'll also likely want to game a bit, so I've included a decent video card.

 

I'll be looking to the used market for parts, so it's more of a "what's needed" build instead of a "make me a list on PCPartPicker" build. I know, much disappoint.

After looking at what's available, there's likely going to be a huge number of older Ryzen builds up for sale...so that's what I'm going to target.

 

Keep in mind this is more of a hobby, this isn't what she's going to be doing for work.

 

So far I'm thinking build wise:

• Ryzen 1700 or 1800
• 16GB RAM
• 500GB SSD
• 3TB HDD
• RX580

Now, for my questions, since I know nothing of video editing:

• Is 16GB of RAM enough? I know more is always better, but if it's only going to slightly increase her output speed, it doesn't really matter.
• How much storage is needed on the SSD if it's going to be her workflow drive?
• How much space do 10ish minute 1080p videos take up? Is 3TB going to last her a while?
• I was thinking of getting her a 4k monitor. Is there any issue with editing 1080p footage on a 4k screen? I can't imagine there is, but again, I don't edit.

 

I'm very open to suggestions, tips, etc.

[LukeSavenije]

1 minute ago, dizmo said:

Ryzen 1700 or 1800

the problem with adobe is that it still works best with cuda and quicksync. with that comes ring bus as well, which the ryzens simply don't have

 

just keep that in mind

[dizmo]

4 minutes ago, LukeSavenije said:

the problem with adobe is that it still works best with cuda and quicksync. with that comes ring bus as well, which the ryzens simply don't have

 

just keep that in mind

What kind of issues does that cause?

[dizmo]

1 minute ago, Genwyn said:

None, it's just that under certain workloads, Intel/Nvidia tends to be overall faster in a lot of adobe software.

I'd consider Intel, but honestly I don't think there's anything in the same price bracket.

For what I can get a 1700 for, I'd get maybe an 8400.

Am I right in assuming the extra 2 cores and 10 threads would make it overall considerably faster?

[LukeSavenije]

9 minutes ago, dizmo said:

What kind of issues does that cause?

it's not really issues

 

it just means intel+Nvidia still does better in the adobe suite

[dizmo]

1 minute ago, LukeSavenije said:

it's not really issues

 

it just means intel+Nvidia still does better in the adobe suite

I refer you to the post above yours...same question?

[LukeSavenije]

6 minutes ago, dizmo said:

I refer you to the post above yours...same question?

I'll just leave it to @Princess Luna to make sure... she works more with adobe then i do

[Princess Luna]

44 minutes ago, dizmo said:

So far I'm thinking build wise:

• Ryzen 1700 or 1800
• 16GB RAM
• 500GB SSD
• 3TB HDD
• RX580

This build would be perfectly adequate for Sony Vegas (now just Vegas Pro because Sony sold it out) since Vegas can use OpenCL extremely well for hardware acceleration purposes and it's code also is more friendly to AMD processors, how to use SMT and so on.

 

But if you're certain you want to go Premiere Pro then the story changes completely; first Premiere Pro is just terrible with OpenCL, Adobe never cared to it and only did a half baked implementation to appease AMD users.

 

There is no way around it, Premiere Pro is CUDA Acceleration you ought to aim a different GPU since the RX580 would become nearly useless.

 

About Intel, the thing about it is that Adobe also likes it better due to how it's coded, its actual editing tools are all 100% single threaded and even more it requires Intel's hyper low latency Ring Bus to sustain the snappy responsive feeling you'll be after.

 

When it comes down to rendering, exporting and other fully multi-threaded tasks you can enable iGPU hardware acceleration (QuickSync) will boost performance and make something like the i7 8700K match a TR1950X... amazing results.

 

So the very first thing you have to figure out is what program you're buying to use... if its Vegas or Premiere? that will dictate whether you should go AMD or Intel+nVidia for this build, then we can figure out the rest.

[dizmo]

@Princess Luna

Interesting. I don't mind going with an Nvidia GPU paired with the AMD processor, as I can probably source a GTX 1070 relatively cheap.

How would an i5 8400 perform vs an AMD 1700 though?

There's no budget for something like an 8700k.

[Princess Luna]

I take it that you're settling for Premiere Pro then?

 

If so yes the GTX 1070 is a better investment than the RX580.

 

16GB of memory is likely to suffice if you don't to multi-task beyond your video editing project, leaving the OS free of any unneeded sideground and background applications running will do the trick I believe.

 

An up-to-date 7200rpm HDD shouldn't become a bottleneck and 3TB is a terrific start specially if you're getting a SSD for the OS and core applications.

 

Monitor wise there's no need for 4k, in fact due o scaling issues 4k might be an annoyance, I'd aim for a 1440p panel instead.

 

Now the most tricky decision here is the CPU, if you could fit at least an i7 8700 then I'd say Intel but the i5 8400 things gets a bit 6 for half dozen when compared to using the R7 1700X... the i5 8400 should still be better for editing with the QuickSync making up the less threads when rendering and exporting however multi-tasking will be more limited, then again with just 16gb of RAM there's only so much multi-tasking you can do.

 

I'd say pick whatever ends up being the cheaper combo here, since both will trade blows in the end.

[dizmo]

@Princess Luna

Possibly? I'm not 100% sure yet, depends what she wants to spend per month. It's $40 vs $15 when it comes to Adobe vs Vegas, so she might start out on Vegas and then move on to Adobe if she ends up taking a liking to content creation.

 

I'm going to be building this system over the next month, month and a half, while she struggles to use her laptop to edit. Then I'll set it up in her room, take out her old desks, replace it with a new Ikea unit, etc and she can stumble across it when she gets home.

 

I miiiight end up with 32GB of RAM, we'll see what pops up over the next month. I'll aim for it, but more than likely it'll be 16GB. I don't think she'll really multitask too much so that should be fine. Good to know that 3TB is sufficient storage, it'll also be backed up by an external 3TB drive. It's a shame that scaling is an issue, the 4k monitors look so much sexier design wise!

 

What are your thoughts on a 29" 1080p 21:9 vs a 27" 1440p for editing?

 

The 8700 is pretty hard to get used, unfortunately. However, I'll see if I can find a Dell tower going cheap, and perhaps swap an i3 into it to sell it after the fact. Might be able to get an i7 pretty cheap that way. I might be able to nudge into a 2000 series Ryzen, which should close the gap.

[m777y]

 choose ssd nvme for 4k editing

don't miss that

[brob]

1 hour ago, dizmo said:

 

What are your thoughts on a 29" 1080p 21:9 vs a 27" 1440p for editing?

 

The larger work surface (desktop) of the higher resolution is generally preferred.

[dizmo]

2 hours ago, m777y said:

 choose ssd nvme for 4k editing

don't miss that

I don't think that's really in the budget, and honestly probably wouldn't even be that noticeable to her.

She wouldn't really be using the computer for anything else than editing video.

10 minutes ago, brob said:

 

The larger work surface (desktop) of the higher resolution is generally preferred.

It'd only be more vertical space, with the former having a physically wider screen.

[brob]

2 hours ago, dizmo said:

It'd only be more vertical space, with the former having a physically wider screen.

 

More pixels is more pixels. 

 

Edit: buy some may prefer the larger physical size. Any way to have the user checkout the display choices?

[Princess Luna]

13 hours ago, dizmo said:

It's $40 vs $15 when it comes to Adobe vs Vegas, so she might start out on Vegas and then move on to Adobe if she ends up taking a liking to content creation.

Software is a matter of what you get used with, there's no meaningful drawbacks using the latest Vegas specially to a novice... and if she becomes skilled at Vegas she might actually suffer having to do a switch to Premiere Pro.

 

Then again it's worth noting that like at least 80% of all professional environments do use Premiere Pro so it's something to be wary of.

 

13 hours ago, dizmo said:

I miiiight end up with 32GB of RAM, we'll see what pops up over the next month. I'll aim for it, but more than likely it'll be 16GB.

16GB is a good start, just grab a motherboard with 4 DIMMs so you can go 32GB down the line and you're golden, my brother who's the professional editor gets things done with 32GB which is sufficient, even his workloads will use around 28GB on peak and that's professional editing for our local news channel [:

 

13 hours ago, dizmo said:

Good to know that 3TB is sufficient storage,

It is, if you delete the source files once your work is done 3TB will last for a really long time... things only gets messy if you gotta store the raw original source files even after your final product is done... but either ways for a start it will be sufficient and adding another HDD is easy enough not to stress about it.

 

13 hours ago, dizmo said:

What are your thoughts on a 29" 1080p 21:9 vs a 27" 1440p for editing?

If you ask my brother he'd actually pick the 21:9 1080p because this aspect ratio really is a godsend when working with either Premiere or Vegas, it is more beneficial than the extra resolution (as you can see on signature the workstation has an Acer X34 for a reason)... but lots of people will say 1080p is outdated and crap pixel density and you'd have to be dumb to buy it on current date...

 

Ideally I'd consider the cheapest possible 3440x1440p monitor you can find with not so much regard as for refresh rate.

 

13 hours ago, dizmo said:

The 8700 is pretty hard to get used, unfortunately. However, I'll see if I can find a Dell tower going cheap, and perhaps swap an i3 into it to sell it after the fact. Might be able to get an i7 pretty cheap that way.

Yeah sadly Intel never makes it easy when we're trying to spare a buck, if you can pick a Ryzen 7 2700 and manually fine tune it's clocks for her that's one way to go, certainly... even a B450 Pro4 would be adequate, the processor may be slightly behind the i7 8700 but it's a small compromise that shouldn't make anyone lose their sleep over.