Video Editing/Production Workstation - Questions
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So it looks like they want to have someone in-house shooting and editing some product videos (using Adobe Premiere) to post on our websites. I was thinking of a Dell Precision T5810 workstation with a low-medium end video card, 32GB of RAM and an SSD for the boot drive and some spinning rust for some local storage (things that don't need to be backed up).
My questions are:
Does editing 2D HD video require much horsepower by way of the video card?
I would imagine the CPU would be doing the heavy lifting here, is that correct?
Anything else I should consider?Thanks!
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@wrx7m said in Video Editing/Production Workstation - Questions:
Does editing 2D HD video require much horsepower by way of the video card?
I would imagine the CPU would be doing the heavy lifting here, is that correct?
Anything else I should consider?Thanks!
The GPU depends on the codec... but that is mostly used for effects, color correction and rendering.
CPU does not nesserly do heavy lifting.CUDA cores of the GPU is an important factor, and using a Mercury playback engine supported card.
Also for video editing you will want to edit off local storage, not the network. Network is just too slow unless you are using a very fast Fiber or 10GB Copper network as a good storage array behind it. . a good local raid for scratch disks/projects is a must then manually or automatically back that up to the network.
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Do you really need a workstation class machine for this?
I might think you would be better served with a standard i5 or i7 processor, your 32 GB RAM and all SSD. Disk will be a major limiting factor here, as Jason said.
All that said, I really don't know how Premiere works, wither it's better with say Xeon processors vs the i Series of processors....
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I just found this site that has some tests from Premiere Pro 2015 in a variety of configs -
http://www.techspot.com/article/1270-premiere-pro-cpu-gpu-performance/ -
The storage would be local and files that need to be backed up would be uploaded to a file server.
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@Dashrender said in Video Editing/Production Workstation - Questions:
Do you really need a workstation class machine for this?
I might think you would be better served with a standard i5 or i7 processor, your 32 GB RAM and all SSD. Disk will be a major limiting factor here, as Jason said.
All that said, I really don't know how Premiere works, wither it's better with say Xeon processors vs the i Series of processors....
According to that link, the i7 seems to give the best performance value so I guess I will look more at the optiplex desktops. I wonder how much video card I can get into one of those.
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@wrx7m said in Video Editing/Production Workstation - Questions:
@Dashrender said in Video Editing/Production Workstation - Questions:
Do you really need a workstation class machine for this?
I might think you would be better served with a standard i5 or i7 processor, your 32 GB RAM and all SSD. Disk will be a major limiting factor here, as Jason said.
All that said, I really don't know how Premiere works, wither it's better with say Xeon processors vs the i Series of processors....
According to that link, the i7 seems to give the best performance value so I guess I will look more at the optiplex desktops. I wonder how much video card I can get into one of those.
You should be able to put a single almost anything (if not anything) into it. ensuring the power supply the has the needed adapter would be the only question.
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@Dashrender Yeah, I have had that issue before so I would like to see if I can get it installed from the factory.
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@MarigabyFrias uses Asus equipment for editing.
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I know some post shops do custom builds to get better value and customization.
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@scottalanmiller said in Video Editing/Production Workstation - Questions:
I know some post shops do custom builds to get better value and customization.
yeah i was thinking the same thing.
You can get a few 1 TB SSD drives and save a bundle over buying from Dell.
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Thanks for the whitebox idea. I don't have the time to deal with that level of customization- building, tweaking, supporting. They are kind of trying it out so I don't know how far they plan on taking it. If it gets to be a big thing, then I can spec out some custom stuff.
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Workstation Grade isn't just about getting a Xeon CPU my workstation has a Core i7.. Xeons aren't more powerful than desktop CPUs anymore. But you get better quality hardware, and they tend to last longer than normal desktops. Not to mention more upgradable, and bigger/higher quality PSUs. I'd build one or buy a workstation system. Building is becoming less and less popular for video editing though as the cost difference is much closer than it used to be.
I personally do most of my 4k RAW editing on a workstation laptop, with a quadro card, core i7, 64GB ram, 4k 17" LCD, boot PCIe SSD, 1TB editing SSD.
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If it's just a single workstation you need, check out www.stikc.com (Stallard Technologies, Inc.). They do mostly off-lease equipment, but you can get a factory warranty with just about everything if you want. Because they do off-lease equipment, they'll have a decent selection of workstations more often than not.
I wouldn't cheap out on one by putting rust in for scratch/temp work space. Transcoding was always storage bound when I was working on video for me. Getting an SSD for that, if not a PCIe based card, would be my only recommendation besides what you're already looking at.
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@travisdh1 said in Video Editing/Production Workstation - Questions:
I wouldn't cheap out on one by putting rust in for scratch/temp work space. Transcoding was always storage bound when I was working on video for me. Getting an SSD for that, if not a PCIe based card, would be my only recommendation besides what you're already looking at.
The Bottle Neck for transcoding is almost never the disks. For live playback maybe, but not transcoding that's CPU/GPU
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@Jason said in Video Editing/Production Workstation - Questions:
@travisdh1 said in Video Editing/Production Workstation - Questions:
I wouldn't cheap out on one by putting rust in for scratch/temp work space. Transcoding was always storage bound when I was working on video for me. Getting an SSD for that, if not a PCIe based card, would be my only recommendation besides what you're already looking at.
The Bottle Neck for transcoding is almost never the disks. For live playback maybe, but not transcoding that's CPU/GPU
Hrm, I remember swearing at something while transcoding. I thought it was the drive performance after GPU was enabled. I could be wrong, it's been years.
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@travisdh1 said in Video Editing/Production Workstation - Questions:
@Jason said in Video Editing/Production Workstation - Questions:
@travisdh1 said in Video Editing/Production Workstation - Questions:
I wouldn't cheap out on one by putting rust in for scratch/temp work space. Transcoding was always storage bound when I was working on video for me. Getting an SSD for that, if not a PCIe based card, would be my only recommendation besides what you're already looking at.
The Bottle Neck for transcoding is almost never the disks. For live playback maybe, but not transcoding that's CPU/GPU
Hrm, I remember swearing at something while transcoding. I thought it was the drive performance after GPU was enabled. I could be wrong, it's been years.
Maybe Jason is just used to working on machines with RAID arrays that remove the disk performance issues for him. Definitely wasn't the case in my home or small workstation setups. Single drive solutions for work/scratch. Considering the price of SSD these days, there's just no reason not to do it.
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Having a good GPU can do wonders for rendering times.
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@dafyre said in Video Editing/Production Workstation - Questions:
Having a good GPU can do wonders for rendering times.
Even just halfway decent one does amazing things for render times, yep.
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@Dashrender said in Video Editing/Production Workstation - Questions:
@travisdh1 said in Video Editing/Production Workstation - Questions:
@Jason said in Video Editing/Production Workstation - Questions:
@travisdh1 said in Video Editing/Production Workstation - Questions:
I wouldn't cheap out on one by putting rust in for scratch/temp work space. Transcoding was always storage bound when I was working on video for me. Getting an SSD for that, if not a PCIe based card, would be my only recommendation besides what you're already looking at.
The Bottle Neck for transcoding is almost never the disks. For live playback maybe, but not transcoding that's CPU/GPU
Hrm, I remember swearing at something while transcoding. I thought it was the drive performance after GPU was enabled. I could be wrong, it's been years.
Maybe Jason is just used to working on machines with RAID arrays that remove the disk performance issues for him. Definitely wasn't the case in my home or small workstation setups. Single drive solutions for work/scratch. Considering the price of SSD these days, there's just no reason not to do it.
as I said it can help with playback, but transcoding doesn't even process at real time, Disk isn't the bottle neck.
