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Leo Laporte A technology journalist, author and broadcast personality. His specialties lie in computers, the Web, video games, digital music and consumer electronics. |
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Amber MacArthur An experienced Web content and usability strategist, Amber is also a tech journalist who specializes in Internet, software, and gadget trends and tips. |
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How to upgrade a home PC for video manipulation with some editing and encoding tips.
When it comes to upgrading the system itself, there are lots of options for getting the performance you want.
Before we get into the programs, let’s take a look at the optimal system specs or what to upgrade if this is something you are interested in pursuing long term. One important component to video editing, assuming you already have a way of capturing your masterpiece, is a way to get the footage from your camera to your PC or Mac. Most cameras have a Firewire out cable which enables your editing program to import from the DV tapes. Most Apple computers come with Firewire while older PC motherboards might be lacking. Firewire cards can also be purchased separately if your motherboard doesn’t support it. Another importing method would be to purchase an external box, like the options from Pinnacle.
Video editing is a big memory hog and your project will chug along rather slowly with only 256MB of RAM and even bumping that up to to 512MB or 1GB will make things move a lot smoother. To make sure you select the right type of memory for your system, be sure to check out Crucial’s memory selector. The best part about these upgrades is that they don’t just improve the system’s video editing capabilities; it will increase performance across the board.
Once you are able to digitize the footage, you’ll realize just how much space these unedited movies can require! Large capacity internal and external hard disk drives are continually falling in price and I’d recommend at least a spare 80GB drive just for editing and storage.
Another handy guide for deciding what kind of system you need is to take a look at the minimum specs of the editing program you wish to use. Adobe Premiere Pro 1.5 and Sony Vegas 6 have much beefier requirements compared to Windows Movie Maker. Editing Grandma and Grandpa’s 50th Wedding Anniversary to take out Cousin Jimmy’s brutal karaoke doesn’t really require all the features in the higher end editing suite since Windows Movie Maker will work just fine. Programs like that and the the free Virtual Dub are also great ways to test the video editing waters without investing any money. When it comes to encoding your finished product into formats for sharing, be that QuickTime, Windows Media, DVD, iPod, PSP or way too many others to name, Doom9 probably has a guide for it.
ABOUT THE GUEST
Jenn has helping people with their computer problems since grade 5 and doesn’t plan to stop anytime soon. In the past she has done IT work for major Canadian corporations and currently hosts Open Alpha, a freely downloadable gaming and technology show.
