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Old 02-28-2013, 07:46 PM   #1
stevemc1
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Ideal computer for editing GoPro 3 Black

I have 3 computers and all have 2 gig RAM and similar processing speed, 20? gig hard drive? What is ideal set up for editing 1080 and 1440, and high speed video. I was told 8 gig of RAM, but that was it. I know processing speed must be fast too, and total hard drive storage must be huge. What is minimum, and what is ideal? RAM , hard drive storage, processing speed. I have a Dell pc, and an IBM/Lenovo PC and plan to upgrade one of them for editing exclusivly. Dell would be cheaper I assume.
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Old 03-01-2013, 01:21 PM   #2
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Re: Ideal computer for editing GoPro 3 Black

Quote:
Originally Posted by stevemc1 View Post
I have 3 computers and all have 2 gig RAM and similar processing speed, 20? gig hard drive? What is ideal set up for editing 1080 and 1440, and high speed video. I was told 8 gig of RAM, but that was it. I know processing speed must be fast too, and total hard drive storage must be huge. What is minimum, and what is ideal? RAM , hard drive storage, processing speed. I have a Dell pc, and an IBM/Lenovo PC and plan to upgrade one of them for editing exclusivly. Dell would be cheaper I assume.
I just build my first PC designed for editing, it was actually super easy any body can do it and much cheaper than buying a brand name PC.

What i got was:

8 Gb Ram
Intel i5
1 TB hard drive + 160 gb Solid State drive
Sapphire HD7950 Graphics Card.


I spent about 1000 but this thing is a beast.
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Old 03-01-2013, 02:16 PM   #3
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Re: Ideal computer for editing GoPro 3 Black

Any modern CPU will work i3-i7 but the faster the CPU, the faster your videos will render, especially if you are using a lot of special effects. You will need a lot of hard drive space for RAW footage so you probably don't want anything less than 1 TB of data. A solid state HDD is unnecessary but will speed up your operating system and boot time. Video editing is primarily CPU intensive so you don't need a high-end graphics card. My recommended spec would be i5, 8-gigs of RAM, 2 TB 7200 RPM HDD, $120 class GPU. Should be able to get such a setup for about $700. Here's a good deal: Good Dell XPS Deal with IPS monitor. The Dell Outlet in general has some pretty great deals, especially when they run 25% off coupons.

I work as an IT Professional in case you're wondering.
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Old 03-01-2013, 03:16 PM   #4
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Re: Ideal computer for editing GoPro 3 Black

I have collected 600 gigs, not counting what I've erased, of GoPro HD underwater footage.
I use a Dell Studio laptop with 8 gigs of ram and a 750 gig hd.
GoPro has minimum requirements for video editing somewhere on their website but as I recall min processor speed is 2gigs of dual core or eqiuv. quad core processor. RAM is at least 2Gb.
Bottom line is if your footage displays choppy or skips, you need to upgrade. It sounds like you need a whole new machine. Your machine will probably have compatibility issues if you try to change processor and add RAM.

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Old 03-01-2013, 04:10 PM   #5
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Re: Ideal computer for editing GoPro 3 Black

I think it will depend on how much you want to spend. The sky is the limit.

Here are 2 good powerful options (I like the Asus more):

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicati...289&CatId=2627

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicati...889&CatId=2627

Get rid of your older computers, keep the monitors and connect both monitors to one of these and you will have a nice, very fast setup. You can always upgrade the monitors later.
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Old 03-01-2013, 05:06 PM   #6
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Re: Ideal computer for editing GoPro 3 Black

Steve with the kind of editing your wanting to do now and beyond you would be best off try to sell what you have and go with a new destop to ensure you getting a motherboard that supports the latest and fastest RAM, CPU and harddrive transfers speeds. Don't pay for the top component brands and go with oldest OS that supports the newest hardware. The newer the windows the slower your computer. Back in the day when I built my own desktops I was always impressed with how fast for so much cheaper AMD processors were (and then you can even over-clock) compared to intels. And make sure you have a good fan and heat sink for ventilation!! Call me if you need more help.
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Old 03-01-2013, 07:40 PM   #7
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Re: Ideal computer for editing GoPro 3 Black

Thanks all. macsub, those are some good prices for new big computers. KK I will call you for tech advice. I have a friend who does computer repair and building, he can do that for me. I just have to tell him my parameters.
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Old 03-02-2013, 09:35 AM   #8
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Re: Ideal computer for editing GoPro 3 Black

My current laptop is an Asus U46E-BAL7 which is i7 and 8gb of RAM. Be prepared to buy an external hard drive for excess footage to stop your laptop/comps HDD from getting clogged up: at least 1TB with 7200rpm spindle speed and USB 3.0 to save a LOT of time when transferring, provided your comp has USB 3.0.

Even with the above laptop it still takes a fair amount of time to export videos and it is not that great at RAM-rendering so try and get a good graphics card and as much RAM as your computer can take - max it out to 32GB if it can handle it, video editing programs will sap every last MB that you have!
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Old 03-04-2013, 04:20 PM   #9
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Re: Ideal computer for editing GoPro 3 Black

Quote:
Originally Posted by BajaBum View Post
I just build my first PC designed for editing, it was actually super easy any body can do it and much cheaper than buying a brand name PC.

What i got was:

8 Gb Ram
Intel i5
1 TB hard drive + 160 gb Solid State drive
Sapphire HD7950 Graphics Card.


I spent about 1000 but this thing is a beast.
Think you left out motherboard and case and optical drive and operating system. (your old 32 bit won't cut it) Look for Ivey bridge motherboard if you get Intel quad cores CPU. Try google searching "Gamer" or Gaming" computer and you may find build cheaper than DIY.

Going back to the fundamental question when you are looking for a computer, what software will you be using, some work better with different configurations. Software sites publish minimum but you will need to do some homework to figure out what is the "best." Fortunately, most software has a free trial download so you can see if it plays nicely with your hardware.

If you are looking for cheap, go with DIY and Ubuntu (Linux) 64 bit (free) and Cinlerra software (free) Cinelerra is a close to professional grade editing software, it's compared to FinalCut Pro and Sony Vegas Pro. Downside is you won't find much help from community.

One last thought, if you are going to try 2.7 or 4K video, not very many software programs will handle it plus if you are thinking cinematic quality, you are going to be looking at intel xenon CPU's not i5, looking at entry price of ~$6K. The other thing is, you can use whatever program, the free gopro or handbrake software to break the video you take down to lesser quality and it will edit in just about anything if you lower the bar enough.
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Last edited by Dangerous; 03-04-2013 at 04:29 PM.
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Old 03-04-2013, 11:43 PM   #10
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Re: Ideal computer for editing GoPro 3 Black

A lot has changed last couple of years, and the latest off the shelf hardware of an average new PC today should have plenty of power to process and edit video. But a few things can make things much better.

1. You need a good amount of RAM, and a good system would have a minimum of 8 GB. This allows things to move in big chunks and thus makes everything faster.

2. You need a good CPU preferably an i5 or i7 and can have 2 or 4 or 6 and I think soon even 8 physical processors (not threaded processors) on one socket, and can suppor 64bit instructions. Most editing software today can use multiple processors so the more the better. Also if you want to get more out of your system, there are some i5 and i7 CPU's that are sold at a speed which is actually "underclocked" ... thus you can easily push the CPU speed by quite a bit without affecting stability.

3. Hard Disk Drive is very important. You need big and you need fast. The fastest consumer level HDD can run up to 10,000 rpm but then they get quite expensive. A good setup would be to have a Solid State HDD to run your OS and a fast 10,000 rpm to run your video and another 7,200 rpm HDD to hold your data. If you want even more performance, you can setup 2 x 10,000 rpm drives in RAID "0" for your video drive.

4. You need a 64bit OS. With a 32bit OS you can only access a little more than 3GB of RAM. So even if you have 8GB of RAM in your system it will not be accessed, so a 64bit OS is a must for better performance.

5. USB 3.0. You will most likely have an external HDD to offload some video and a USB 3.0 setup really saves tons of time. Most new motherboards have USB 3.0 but if not, you can buy a USB 3.0 card in a PCI Xpress slot and put on an older system.

6. VGA card. A good VGA card is certainly helpful in video playback, but there are very few consumer level cards that actually decode video, and very few consumer level applications that support on card decoding. Some cards do use CUDA and many applications support that, but not sure if GoPro does. What is useful in a card is to have 2 DVI slots so you can have more than one monitor at full resolution.

7. Good Power Supply. I cannot tell you how important that is! If you are running an i7 with 4 cores running at full blast and a fast VGA card ... that setup consumes a lot of power and it needs to be fed that power smoothly. Many problems of instability are simply due to a PS that cannot provide power to the appropriate rails smoothly. Invest in a Thermaltake or other high quality PS that you can carry on from system to system.

There is probably more out there that can help in making your video editing faster that I did not mention, but really an off the shelf modern computer with a 64bit OS should be plenty. But as in most things you can get more by paying more, but if you are going to only edit a few spearfishing videos, it probably is not worth the extra cost.

If you do decide you want to splurge and want a Video Workstation "system" (which is software mated with hardware specifically for video editing), check out this site as they have good ready made systems.

http://www.adkvideoediting.com/choose.asp

Good luck!

Last edited by spearq8; 03-04-2013 at 11:53 PM.
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Old 03-05-2013, 08:35 PM   #11
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Re: Ideal computer for editing GoPro 3 Black

Here is a parts list and general instructions http://www.corsair.com/us/cpu-coolin...pu-cooler.html Click on the "Learn" tab on the left

I would add a hot swap tray http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817993063 and swap a backup HDD in and out and make backups on a spare HDD

You will need software and a keyboard and mouse. If you go the Linux route, software is free if not look at another maybe ~$200-500. You may be able to clone the HDD from one of your windows XP or Vista and buy a win 7 upgrade. Another trick, but I haven't used it is to try to install the upgrade and when it ask for previous info, stop and reboot from CD and reinstall, thinks that 1st attempt is previous install.

Realize you may have already solved problem but posting for others that may stumble on this thread
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Last edited by Dangerous; 03-05-2013 at 08:46 PM.
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Old 03-29-2013, 05:32 PM   #12
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Re: Ideal computer for editing GoPro 3 Black

Glad I found this thread.
The bad news: Old computer crashed and I spend all damn day today trying to recover my files.
The good news: After liberating many Benjamins, my new computer has the ability to edit GP3 videos.

Most people realize the GP3 purchase is only part of the financial equation.
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Old 04-05-2013, 01:27 PM   #13
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Re: Ideal computer for editing GoPro 3 Black

Not completely specific but should help...

After years of serious photography I've stored up over 40k raw files from numerous DSLRS, some video, tons of music... I had about 1gb of storage full. Thats 2gb with redundancy. I found a Drobo on ebay with 7TB of harddrives included for less than $500.

I don't ever store images on my computer, only external. There are very good deals to be had if you look. If you are going to spend all the money in the water, on cameras, on computers, time invested, etc. You should store it and back it up.

I'm not an IT guy by any means... Just my $.02
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