Good Machine for Video Editing

[halfracedrift]

Well.. My dad's ... erm.. looking for a decent video editing machine.. Prices... well..just try to keep it.. economical..
perhaps... under...1 K USD? (If it goes over, doesn't matter)

 

[emad]

you could get a macintosh if you don't need it for gaming since they are the holy grail of graphic machines. If money is an issue, go for a G4 since it'll still be more than good enough.

If you need a PC, here are a few suggestions

To save money, go for an AMD chip for certain. If you have cash left over afterwords, get an Athlon 64 since most editing programs will be optimized for 64 bit processing in the very near future.

My machine is about a year old but still serves its purpose as a multimedia machine extremely well. It cost me approx $1200 (Canadian).

AthlonXP 1900+ (you can probably afford 2500+
512 MB DDR ram (i'd suggest 724-1024)
Radeon 8500 LE 128mb DDR - (Radeon 9600 is the newest, affordable high end from amd)

For hard disk, i'd suggest at least 120 gb

you obviously need a capture card and firewire. For that, ATI makes a few awesome capture cards or you could get an All-In-Wonder graphics board which will have a capture card built in.

 

[emad]

in response to the pm, here's what i'd suggest. I posted in forum as well simply because other people might also find it interesting

I have the following but keep in mind, for the same 1200 i paid, u can get a better machine
AthlonXP 1900+, Radeon 8500 (128 mb ddr) 512 mb ddr ram, 16x dvd drive, i just got a 52x burner for it for like $50 (the one i used to have was a 4x for my laptop), 40 gb hard drive. I used my old monitor to save even more money.

All prices from www.canadacomputers.com - it's all canadian dollars here. Exchange rate is 1.3 or so per USD
Here's what i suggest for a new machine:
-Athlonxp 2700+ - $172
-Any Asus motherboard that handles s-ata and dual-channel ddr will do. I prefer the Via chipset only because it's been around longer and has proven itself time and time again. These things go for around $80-150. MSI is cheaper but doesn't have the greatest quality control. I've heard a lot of stories of defects (but the company/reseller always replaces the faulty ones free)
-512megs to 1gig of the best dual channel ram you can buy. here are the prices (again from canadacomputers.com - this is their best available i think):


quote:
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512MB (256MBx2) PC3500 DDR433 CAS2 (OCZ433512ELDCPE-K) $279.99
1GB (512MBx2) PC3500 DDR433 CAS2 (OCZ4331024ELDCPE-K) $529.99
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-ATI All-In-Wonder Radeon 9600 Pro 128MB DDR (this thing comes with capture card built in for a few bucks more than the standard 9600)- $298
-Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 2 - $99
-Seagate 120.0GB S-ATA, 8MB cache - $148
-LG 16X DVD-ROM - $39
-LiteOn 52x32x52 CD-RW OEM $46

that puts you just over the $1200 limit for a very high end machine...no monitor though...you could skimp on the ram by going single channel, but the difference is too great imo

If you wait for a computer show to come to town, u can grab most of these parts at or below wholesale cost with no difficulty

Cd burner was chosen because of the cost of dvd burners. If you want one of those, i'd wait for summer to come by and burn svcds...or spend the extra 2-300

aww crap...forgot about the case and power supply...a combo purchase will run you approx $50-100 too. You could hold back on the audigy 2 sound card and opt for onboard motherboard audio but the quality isn't anywhere near as nice.

you could also ditch the s-ata and opt for IDE but the prices @ the site were different by about $10-15 so why not get that extra bit of speed?

 

[milefile]

A Dell Inspiron 8500 or 8600 will do nicely. I have an 8500 and have been pleased. I do wish my HD was larger, but I'll probably get a new one soon. The base model is good enough, and you can dress it up to suit your specific needs.

As far as under $1000, good luck. I suggest looking into a refurbished system. Probably your only option. Both Dell and Gateway sell refurbished systems with full, new system warranties.