My first machine that was capable to perform video editing was a Dell Pentium 2.4Ghz and worked perfectly fine. My current machine is an HP with an Athlon 64 3700+ 2.2 GHz, 1G Ram, 200GB primary drive, 160GB drive slave and a 250GB external drive.

The good news is that you can get a pretty decent PC for under $1000. The most important features to look for in a video editing machine are the processor and the hard drive.

Minimum features to look for:

• A Real P4 or AMD processor. Avoid the Celeron or Sempron lines.
• At least 160G drive (it is HIGHLY recommended to get a second hard drive of at least 200G)
• 512K ram, 1G is better, more is better still.

I was able to recently price a Dell Dimension 9200 System that had an Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 processor, 1G RAM, 250GB hard drive, 19″ monitor and a Firewire port for $849. If I was in the market video editing computer this is what I would buy. I would also upgrade to 2G RAM.

The Processor – AMD VS Intel
Recenty Intel introduced the Core 2 Duo Processors. These processors are THE choice for home video editing at the moment. According to Tom’s Hardware if you compare a Intel Core 2 E6400 to a AMD X2 3800+ there is over a minute difference in their benchmark to encode a 24 second clip.

Last year I essentially said it was a toss up between an Intel or AMD processor. That is no longer the case as I now recommend an Intel Core 2 processor. If you are going to buy an intel based system I would make sure it is a Core 2 system. The Core 2 processors are a major leap in performance from the Pentium 4 and Pentium D.

The Hard Drive – Two is better

There are some that recommend two hard drives for better performance. One for the operating system and programs and the other for your video files. I never had any performance issues using one hard drive. However the reason I recommend two hard drives is to prevent fragmentation of your operating system files. Fragmentation occurs when the operating system stores parts of files in gaps that surround existing files, instead of saving the file in a contiguous space on the hard drive.

When you are saving Gigs and Gigs of video files it is rather amazing how fragmented your hard drive can get.

Windows comes with a utility to defrag a hard drive located at
Start > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools

Luckily hard drives are rather cheap. I would not buy one less than 200G. An hour of DV video uses about 13 Gigs. If you’re like me you may use two cameras to shoot a concert or recital. Before you know it you need to store 4+ hours of DV video to begin the editing process. Also the programs themselves create scratch or temp files when editing and authoring.

The Video card

For video editing you do not need a high performance video card. For DVD playing and video editing the standard graphics cards work well. If you are a gamer then you will need a high performance video card.

The Monitor

If you can afford the extra $$ get a 19″ LCD. I thought a 17″ would be fine but now I can’t imagine not having the 19″.

The choice of video cards for home movie editing is not important at all. You will be able to capture movies from your camera via firewire, edit and play AVI and MPGEG movies with just a basic video card or your on board graphics.

But what if you do your editing on a machine where you play an occasional game ? Games do require a special graphics card that is more powerful. The reason is that unlike video streams games send mathematical data to the card describing how to draw items. Some games need very complex commands and huge amounts of data describing how to draw textures and shading for objects to make the games look more realistic.

Following is a list of what I recommend for video cards. Whenever I buy products I want my purchase to be future proof. I want a product with technology that will last a few years. I also stay away from bleeding edge technology. Often brand new products are have a high price/performance ratio. In the computer world prices will drop after a product has been released for a while.

Nvidia and ATI are the two primary players in the graphics card world. Vendors take the basic cards by the vendors and place them into their own packages and layer other applications into the package.

Nvidia

• GEforce 6200 – This is the minimum card I would buy from Nvidia. Current prices are in the $55-$75 range. Make sure you do NOT but a 6200TC or Turbo Cache.
  Although it sound it will be faster it is not. Rather than having memory on the video card it uses system memory. The need to pass information to system memory takes time and processing power, which slows things down.
• GEforce 6600

– Good solid card in the $75-$100 dollar price range.

• GEforce 6600GT

– The current sweet spot for video cards. High performance in a price range of $120-$150.

• GeForce 7000 series

– For the video gaming enthusiast. Typically in the $180+ range. Includes
the GeForce 7300, GeForce 7600, GeForce 7900 and GeForce 7900 series.

ATI

• Radeon 9600PRO

Minimum card from ATI. Typically in the $50-$75 range.

• Sapphire Radeon 9800
• Radeon X700 Pro

– This is the competitor to the Nvidia GeForce 6600 GT. $140-$150

• Radeon X800GTP

– a lower clocked version of the X800PRO

• Radeon Radeon X850 XT

– Typically in the $150+ range

• Radeon 1xxx series

– Thes are the enthusiasts models and include the x1300, X1600, X1800 and X1900.

I update my PC recommendations for video editing. This year the clear choice is a computer with the Intel Core 2 Duo Processor. There are few different flavors of this processor available. The good news is that even the lowest processor in this line, the E6300, blazes.

The sweet spot for pricing is the E6300 or E6400. Both of the have 2MB of L2 cache while the higher level chips have 4MB of L2 cache.

I was able to price together a rather nice Dell PC with an E6300 for about $850 with a 19″ monitor.