Most Important Component for Video Editing?

[wintercat]

Just a random question related to a possible build. If the primary purpose I'll use a rig for is video editing, what's aspect of my build will be under the most pressure? Should I focus on a CPU with more cores or a GPU with more VRAM or clock speeds, etc.? If I'm aiming for a budget well under a $1k and my video editing is not 4K, is 2GB of VRAM fine with components that won't bottleneck?

[Joshlikescola]

Pretty much all of it will be under pressure. What software are you using. Some are more efficient than others...

A Quad Core is probably most suitable for your build. 16GB RAM and a GPU like a GTX 950/960 should be pretty solid for video editing. Especially if you're using 1080p footage. Also get a reasonably quick HDD like a Western Digital Black in a reasonably large capacity like 2TB or more for all those files!

[JefferyD90]

6 minutes ago, wintercat said:

Just a random question related to a possible build. If the primary purpose I'll use a rig for is video editing, what's aspect of my build will be under the most pressure? Should I focus on a CPU with more cores or a GPU with more VRAM or clock speeds, etc.? If I'm aiming for a budget well under a $1k and my video editing is not 4K, is 2GB of VRAM fine with components that won't bottleneck?

Honestly having plenty of RAM is a big factor for video editing.

[HoiDaniel]

at least 4 INTEL cores, get a non-shit GPU. More VRAM is always better. More RAM is also better.

[wintercat]

Just now, Joshlikescola said:

Pretty much all of it will be under pressure. What software are you using. Some are more efficient than others...

A Quad Core is probably most suitable for your build. 16GB RAM and a GPU like a GTX 950/960 should be pretty solid for video editing. Especially if you're using 1080p footage. Also get a reasonably quick HDD like a Western Digital Black in a reasonably large capacity like 2TB or more for all those files!

My friend (it's for him, potentially) went with CyberLink PowerDirector.

[SeanAngelo]

14 minutes ago, wintercat said:

Just a random question related to a possible build. If the primary purpose I'll use a rig for is video editing, what's aspect of my build will be under the most pressure? Should I focus on a CPU with more cores or a GPU with more VRAM or clock speeds, etc.? If I'm aiming for a budget well under a $1k and my video editing is not 4K, is 2GB of VRAM fine with components that won't bottleneck?

quad core with HT preferably, 16GB ram and a lot of gpu horsepower

[OddsCrazyStuff]

Fast CPU, enough RAM (at least 16GB), a GPU (matter less which one, see video) and fast enough storage.

 

For storage so do I recommend a 4 drive setup: 1 big hard drive for mass storage + backup, 1 SSD for current projects, 1 SSD for renders and 1 SSD for cache. Cache is the files the programs stores, so it dont make chances to the original files.

Granted, that setup is based on the fact that you work on long projects/lots of video files or 4K videos. For small projects, so will a big hard drive and a SSD be enough. Also remember to check how much data they can write, as you can be moving a lot more data then normal use.

 

 

[BrightCandle]

NLEs push on the CPU, GPU, RAM size and speed and drive performance. Its a full workout across everything. The two key aspects that most people notice being slow are the scrubbing (going back and forth in the timeline) and the final render out. Scrubbing is quite a bit about drive speed and CPU performance as well as GPU in some programs and the more RAM for caching you have the better. Rendering however is more heavily biased towards CPU performance, powerdirector does use the GPU but for me at least it uses about 30% of a 970 but it maxes out all 8 cores. So you can get away with relatively little in terms of GPU and you'll want more CPU than anything else.

[suchamoneypit]

A good CPU and RAM (16GB should be fine) are the most important in my mind.

[AyeJayKay]

4790k or skylake equivalent.

 

If you can, a 5820k will help a bunch. If you have software that utilizes CUDA such as Adobe CC then get a low to mid range Nvidia card. If you want to game and edit then of course, get a stronger GPU but really its the CPU that NLEs rely on.

 

Also you could go for an AMD card if you program uses OpenCL. I believe that Sony Vegas supports both CUDA and OpenCL but OpenCL actually performs better for it. While Adobe CC prefers CUDA.

[AshleyAshes]

I work in the film industry and honesty the component that is under the most pressure and which is the most important is the user.

 

And I mean that.  Honestly, better hardware can improve render times and improve real time preview playback but anyone who's worth their salt can get good work done on any PC with their preferred software suite.

 

...Though Nuke X can get pretty god damn unusable without a lot of RAM and stupid fast storage when doing 4K. :X

[ALwin]

11 hours ago, wintercat said:

Just a random question related to a possible build. If the primary purpose I'll use a rig for is video editing, what's aspect of my build will be under the most pressure? Should I focus on a CPU with more cores or a GPU with more VRAM or clock speeds, etc.? If I'm aiming for a budget well under a $1k and my video editing is not 4K, is 2GB of VRAM fine with components that won't bottleneck?

Depends on what you want and how much you want to spend.  If your budget is only $1000, don't spend 50% on a very powerful CPU and 10% on a crappy GPU (though, depending on what you do in the NLE, a good CPU might be more beneficial than a GPU).  You'll find a lot of topics on this forum where people have been asking why NLEs like Premiere is working with CPU usage above 50% and GPU usage has been staying under 10%.

[BrightCandle]

I happened to be editting and rendering out a video today so I thought I would capture some basic performance stats for you

 

So first up I have CPU and GPU rendering out a video from 1440p@60 50mbps to 1440p@30 20mbps and we can see its most Video engine usage.

 

 

However I realised I had forgot to fix the Saturation and so I rerendered it and I saw the following:

 

 

Video engine usage dropped to 30% as well. So that one simple little FX change caused a big jump in CPU usage and shifted a lot of work off the GPU onto the CPU.

 

I also captured some scrubbing for you as well, just going back and forth across the timeline with realtime playback and this is what I saw:

 

 

So the end result appears to be that Cyberlink unlike Premiere Pro and Sony vegas actually makes extensive use of the Video engine in Nvidia cards and is only using a couple of cores worth of CPU when its not rendering effects. However a simple change of saturation can very quickly change the CPU usage dramatically. Its not really that heavy on memory and I never saw it use more than 2GB on these 40+ minute files at 1440p but then its also not a very complicated project. Cyberlink PowerDirector is the fastest NLE available and this trace kind of proves why, it makes better use of the Video engine on the GPU than either of the other two but you can certainly get it to push the machine easily if you use effects, colour grading and such.

 

The video I encoded was mostly just taking 1440p@60 50mbps down to 1440p@30 20mbps, processed two audio channels into 1 channel and then a couple of fades and some titling and that was it so its not exactly heavy on anything it was about as basic as my projects get but this gives you an idea of what it takes out of the machine. The SSD really helps for scrubbing as does the CPU, for final render out the Video engine (Shadowplay basically) and the CPU do a decent workout. My recommendation is only marginally adjusted, you don't need a good GPU you just need one with NVENC and I believe all cards with that have the same capabilities.

 

[.spider.]

Storage speed if you are working with uncompressed footage. 

[Scruffy90]

CPU is taxing during rendering. I feel like long term this may be the most important component. Faster CPU and more cores, the faster your render occurs.