Need Hardware Upgrade Advice

[VideoCH]

I'm editing video with Windows Movie Maker and have the following hardware:

- AMD Athlon XP 1700+ CPU (1.46 GHz)
- GeForce 3 Ti 200 based video card (AGP)
- 2 GB PC3200 (DDR400) RAM

In Movie Maker, the preview panel cannot display frames quickly enough to have smooth video when I'm editing Mini-DV based video imported from my camcorder (the final rendered movies look fine, but it's a pain not being able to see the video play smoothly when editing). I just upgraded from 512MB of PC2700 RAM to 2GB of PC3200 RAM. Now I wondering if I need to upgrade my processor or my video card or both? Will upgrading just one of them do the trick?

I'd like NOT to have to replace my motherboard right now if possible and so the fastest CPU I could put in is an AMD Athlon XP 3200+ (2.2 GHz). The motherboard also is AGP based, and so I was considering getting an ATI X1600 Pro 512MB video board. Will either of these upgrades alone provide sufficient horsepower to enable me to edit Mini-DV video without dropping frames in preview/editing mode? I'd like to invest only the money required to enable this capability.

Thanks for any and all advice.

 

[kestrel1]

I don't think that upgrading your Processor by this amount would really help that much. I would say upgrading you Graphics card would be your best option at present. You say you have upgraded your RAM with PC3200, is your mobo making the most of this? In other words can it run at the 3200 speed or is it only capable of running at the old 2700 speed?

 

[VideoCH]

Yes the Abit motherboard is capable of supporting PC3200 (the top speed it can support). Also the motherboard has four slots for RAM, and I've installed the two 1GB RAM modules in Slots 1 and 3 (per the motherboard's manual) to maximize the double data rate speed potential of the RAM modules (slots 2 and 4 simultaneously would have been acceptable also).

Thanks for the response.

 

[satrow]

This issue may be more closely related to data throughput and other processes running.

What connection does the cam to PC use - Firewire? What cam?

Is this a dual-purpose PC - websurfing + dv editing?

Just one hard drive (7,200 rpm, DMA enabled?) - on it's own IDE cable?

I'd setup a new hardware profile based on the minimum needed services to test the DV editing before spending money, you should be able to get down to around 14 services running at startup, rather than the 30-40+ I guess you are using now.

Blackvipers guide to XP services is hosted at Majorgeeks,

http://www.majorgeeks.com/page.php?id=12

- it should give you a good grounding. Study these pages too

http://www.videoguys.com/Top10tech.htm

http://www.videoguys.com/TweaksWINXPVE.html

and

http://www.videoguys.com/WinXP2.html

 

[VideoCH]

My 3CCD Panasonic PV-GS400 camera has its video imported via Firewire although I have no issues importing the video. The problem comes once the video has been imported and I'm working with the various clips in Movie Maker. Yes the computer is a multi-purpose computer; however, the throughput issue still occurs even if only my Windows XP account is active. Just one hard drive (160 GB, 5400 RPM) although I recently purchased a 250 GB SATA drive (150 GB/s) ... I haven't installed it yet. I don't believe its a drive problem though because the issue occurs even with the minimum of Mini-DV video is being worked with (i.e. I believe in that situation my 2GB of RAM is sufficient to handle the video without Movie Maker having to use the drive during playback while editing).

It really does seem like a "horsepower" issue. Hence, I like the idea of setting up a separate account with minimum services available. I'll give that a try. If it still doesn't fix the throughput issue, then I'll still be interested in folks' ideas if an upgraade as I described earlier would help enough. I'm not planning on buying another full computer until about 1 year from now. Thanks.

 

[kestrel1]

I would say if the profile change doesn't work, change your video card. What is the speed of your AGP port? Do you have PCI-X ports on your mobo?
Get the best video card that you can afford, preferably PCI-X if you have the ports.

 

[satrow]

From the videoguys Top 10 link:- "If playback stutters, it's your storage.
Today's cards do NOT drop frames. Jerky playback is most often caused by inadequate storage or improperly configured storage. If you are using a single UDMA drive, go into Device Manager. Hit the + sign next to disk drives to get a list of all your drives. Check out the properties of each one. Make sure the DMA box is checked for all hard drives. If you are using SCSI, make sure that you have proper termination and if you have external SCSI drives make sure you are not negotiating down. What this means is simple. Your external SCSI chain is only as fast as the slowest SCSI device on it. Putting a 50 pin Jazz drive or Scanner on your external SCSI chain can kill performance. Make sure that you do not have an IRQ conflict with your storage controller and another PCI device in your system. For best results your storage controller needs it's own IRQ. Click here for more info on video storage."

You really are struggling by using your 5,400 drive for OS, apps and video storage - that's where the problem lies, IMHO.

 

[paparazi]

I agree! the newer 7,200rpm drive should help some but I would also point out video editting is CPU intensive and has very little to do with the graphics card so I'm sorry to have to disagree with kestrel1, a new video card will not cure your problem.
The faster CPU would definately help but to be honest if you are serious about video editting things have come on along way since your socket462 Athlon XP1700.
More memory is indeed a big plus but I can't seeing vast improvements with this setup beyond 2gig, there are simply too many other bottlenecks in your system.
Things could be helped considerably by running "bare" with only the applications needed for the task but that's difficult on a "shared" system!!
Martin

We like members to GIVE and not just TAKE.
Participate and help others.

 

[kestrel1]

I agree that video editing is going to take alot of CPU usage, but I edit video perfectly well on an AMD Duron 1ghz CPU with no problems, so an Athlon 1.46ghz CPU shouldn't have too many problems. One thing to check might be the amount of processes that are running in the background. Stop anything that is not required. The speed of your HD could make a difference as well.

 

[Nelviticus]

Here's an easy thing to check: run Task Manager while you're doing the editing and if the CPU is mostly at 100%, then you need to upgrade your CPU. If it's not, you need to upgrade your graphics card.

My money is on the CPU, although personally I'd upgrade both. CPU prices have plummeted in recent weeks and even the cheapest currently-available graphics card is going to be much, much more powerful than your present one.

Regards

Nelviticus