Registered: Jan 2001
Location: anywhere but here
Posts: 4420

whats the best solution to this

ok i have a Tiny 400mhz pentium 2 with 160 sdram, a ATI rage pro 2 graphics card, an onboard sound card which i think is shit and a masushita DVD ROM which seems quite good.

now i have been thinking about this for some time, i want to make small arthouse style movies and i want to do all of the post production on my home computer. what would be the best thing for me to do, (and money is a major issue) upgrade my current computer, buy a new PC or go save for a few years and get myself an apple g4 tower, simply because apples are supposedly better for graphical work and sound design.

i dont really do any gaming so that not important, i do watch DVDs as im a film student, and i would like to make my own soundtrakcs for my films so i also need recomendations on whether to get cubase or pro tools.

can anyone help me?

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....i've done the math enough to know the dangers of our second guessing.....

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Registered: Nov 2000
Location: UK
Posts: 4736

Bump the ram up to 256 MB, get a better graphics card and shell out for a decent monitor. That's most probably the best short term solution. You might want to look into the Matrox RT2500 or the G450 eTV(The RT is an amazing piece of hardware for the price, but it may be out of your range. I know very little about the eTV except that it includes video capture and some realtime effects work).

The kind of hardware you need to do video really depends on what you are working with. For just hobby video work, your processor is OK, if a little long in the tooth. RAM and plenty of harddisk space are more important. I can't say much about the Mac, except that it's not the market leader in video work it used to be. Discreets edit* and combustion* come to mind for the low end. Also, PC hardware has taken over the Mac, speedwise and cost wise.

Soundcard wise, you're best bet it most likely the SBLive. Creative have once again become the defacto standard in soundcards.

As for sequencing your own music tracks, can't offer much advice. The last time I did sequencing was with ScreamTrack3. Mods rock!

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May a hundred thousand midgets invade your home singing cheesy lounge-lizard versions of songs from The Wizard of Oz

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Registered: Jul 2000
Location: Minneapolis, MN
Posts: 10178

perhaps a whammy bar upgrade is in order too

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Registered: Jul 2001
Location:
Posts: 78

Hard drive speed is important to keep from dropping frames during video capture. If you have a 7200 rpm drive (which you probably don't), you should be fine. You probably have a 5400, which will still work, but not as well. ATA66 or 100 = GOOD, where you probably have an ATA33 drive and motherboard controller.

Oh, and you've got to have a damn-sized drive, too. 30-40GB, I would advise. That's big enough for me to keep about an hour of footage plus my other files.

From what I have read about CPU reccomendations, 700-800 mhz is considered minimum. You probably COULD do it on a 400, but again, you've got to consider how important dropped frames are to you.

I use an ASUS v7700 Geforce 2 GTS Deluxe video card with tv in and out. They're kinda tricky to set up depending on which motherboard you have, but works nicely for a home user, especially when it's a nice video card upgrade and capture card in one.

Sound Blasters are pretty standard, but they're major resource hogs. There are other options here that are just as good, but I don't have any advice since I have a SBlive, myself.

And that's what I think.

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Registered: Mar 2001
Location: London
Posts: 370

If you are going to take some or all of Adora's comments, just remember to increase the PSU that you have. In that machine you will probably have a 250W or if you were lucky a 300W. The 300W should suffice, but I would recommend going up to an Enermax 431W. It will have lots of power available and will never make you "brown out" when not enough power is available.

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Registered: Nov 2000
Location: UK
Posts: 4736

quote:

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Originally posted by Adora:
Hard drive speed is important to keep from dropping frames during video capture. If you have a 7200 rpm drive (which you probably don't), you should be fine. You probably have a 5400, which will still work, but not as well. ATA66 or 100 = GOOD, where you probably have an ATA33 drive and motherboard controller.

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Sorta. If you're using a purely uncompressed capturing format, hard disk speed becomes pretty important. Hence me suggesting the Matrox products, as they provide hardware based MJPEG capture. And for simple home video, the difference between a compressed and uncompressed source will be minimal.

quote:

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From what I have read about CPU reccomendations, 700-800 mhz is considered minimum. You probably COULD do it on a 400, but again, you've got to consider how important dropped frames are to you.

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I've seen people do video editing on a P200 with 32 MB of ram. It all depends on how much coffee you have and how long you're prepared to wait

quote:

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Sound Blasters are pretty standard, but they're major resource hogs. There are other options here that are just as good, but I don't have any advice since I have a SBlive, myself.

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Unfortunately, for the price point, the SB Live is hard to beat, especially for MIDI work. After the SBLive you're looking at at either Terratec or Yamaha(XG synths rock), which start at around £350+. No good for a student on a budget

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May a hundred thousand midgets invade your home singing cheesy lounge-lizard versions of songs from The Wizard of Oz

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