Ideal Processor for Editing?

Xarathion · Post by **Xarathion** » Tue Jan 31, 2006 10:48 am

I'm not newbie to video editing. I've done it for a few years using my school's equipment. (more specifically, Vegas on a Pentium 4)

I'm starting to do AMVs though. My home PC is an AMD Athlon XP 2800+ 2.1 ghz, 1 gig of RAM, and an ATI Radeon x800 GTO graphics card with 256 mb memory. My OS is Win2k Pro, all updated, and a fairly fast hard drive. I'm still living at home, and I received some video editing software as a gift about a week ago.

For a while now I've been looking at Nova Video Explosion Deluxe, since it seems to be a straight clone of Vegas, which I already know how to use. But the software I recieved as a gift was Magix Movie Studio 10. (I think that's the name of it...not at home at the moment to check)

For the most part, it works fine. The only beef I have with it is the lag this software has. As you all know, in AMV editing, you use a lot of very short duration clips right after one another. Whenever I play my project, it always lags and skips whenever it hits these clusters of small clips, or whenever it has to load a transition.
I've tried all the different display and playback settings I can to speed it up, but to no effect. Magix has a little CPU monitor at the bottom of the screen, and I've noticed that it peaks to 100% CPU usage whenever it tries to play a new clip in the timeline, or it is transitioning between clips.

So I've come to the conclusion that my processor is too slow. A defrag did not help. It could also be that this software just lags as a given. Anyone have any experience with Magix? Or should I try and get a hold of a new processor, possibly a Pentium or Athlon 64 with more ghz?

(I also play a fair amount of games, which is why I have an AMD at the moment)

Xarathion · Post by **Xarathion** » Tue Jan 31, 2006 11:16 am

Err....correction: The editor is Magix Movie Edit Pro 10, not Movie Studio.

(couldn't find the edit button...I'm guessing it's disabled for newer members?)

qazyseult · Post by **qazyseult** » Tue Jan 31, 2006 1:53 pm

That computer set-up is much better than mine.

It sounds like it's a software problem. I'm not familiar with the program, but if it lags when there are many clips, it might be that it isn't making very good preview files, or none at all. One way to get around the problem would be to make more sub-projects. Instead of having all your clips on one timeline, take different scenes and make those in a separate project. When you get that scene the way you want, export it into HuffYUV to keep quality and add the completed clip to the main project. That should make it easier for the program by reducing the number of clips.

gangstaj8 · Post by **gangstaj8** » Tue Jan 31, 2006 2:42 pm

That's the same processor I have, but I've got less RAM and Video Memory, but am running Win XP Home. I edit with Premiere 6 and don't have any problems with my previews. So I'm with Qazyseult, I doubt it's your processor, especially after looking up the programs minimum requirements.

Have you checked online for any patches? What codec are you using? It may be that the codec you've used in other programs just doesn't cooperate very well with this one. I dunno though, just throwing out suggestions. Good luck.

RichLather · Post by **RichLather** » Tue Jan 31, 2006 3:01 pm

Intel Pentium4 2.4gHz with hyperthreading, paired up with 1GB of PC3200 DDR RAM. So far it's adequate for heavy editing, and I can have After Effects and Premiere (sometimes Photoshop instead of AE) open at the same time along with a browser window with no difficulty.

That kind of RAM is cheap enough now (less than $100 for a pair of 512MB sticks on newegg.com) that I'll probably bump it up to 2GB before long.

Pwolf · Post by **Pwolf** » Tue Jan 31, 2006 4:09 pm

you're computer is perfectly fine... what you might want to look at is what format/codec your footage is in. using the wrong codec/format can drastically slow down seek times and your over all editing no matter what cpu or program you have.

Pwolf

Kai Stromler · Post by **Kai Stromler** » Wed Feb 01, 2006 3:17 am

Xarathion wrote: Anyone have any experience with Magix? Or should I try and get a hold of a new processor, possibly a Pentium or Athlon 64 with more ghz?

(I also play a fair amount of games, which is why I have an AMD at the moment)

I use Magix on an Athlon XP-based system, with basically the setup you described, but it's the previous version (Video 2.0+ deLuxe), and the processor is a 3000+. The software's footprint in memory is probably about the same (~400MB), and the increase in capability from 2800 to 3000 is not enough to explain why my rig works smoothly and yours doesn't.

What frequency does your chip's front-side bus (FSB) run at? What's the maximum access rate of your memory? Most of the 2800s are at 333 MHz, so any speed over that is wasted, and if your computer was originally a budget build, the memory speed may actually be lower than you're able to support. Swapping out for faster RAM, if it's the issue, will be cheaper than upgrading your processor, which at this point will mean a new motherboard as well.

Have you tried playing the skipping section multiple times? If the behavior only occurs on the first pass, and not when you back up and play over it immediately again, then it's solely dependent on loading the clips into memory, and once cached, they're much more accessible. If not, as others have stated, you might want to try changing the formt of the files you're editing with. Uncompressed RGB is bad news; I generally work with HuffYUV clips, but when I was working on my old Pentium M laptop, even they got jerky, and I found that Lagarith played back smoother; it's most likely an issue of total memory footprint rather than processor capability.

hth,
--K

Keeper of Hellfire · Post by **Keeper of Hellfire** » Wed Feb 01, 2006 3:55 am

The system sounds similar to mine, even a little bit stronger. Upgrading to a remarkable stronger processor would produce a lot of costs, because you had to replace the mainboard and probably the graphics card and memory too. What could help a little bit is to increase the memory to 2Gig and to get a dedicated drive for the footage.

What background processes are running during editing? Kill all unnecessary processes, like virus scanner, firewall etc. This link:
http://www.videoguys.com/Win2K.html may help you to tweak your system.

Afaik Magix renders preview in realtime, without prerendering, and depending on how much tracks and effects you use your setup can be too weak to perform it smooth.

Xarathion · Post by **Xarathion** » Wed Feb 01, 2006 11:12 am

Have you tried playing the skipping section multiple times?

Yes, it's the same every time. Lags and skips ahead. Even if I resize the preview window to be tiny, there is no difference.

I'm most likely going to just try and get a hold of a different product. Magix is okay, but there's better stuff out there. Getting new software would be more practical and cheaper than upgrading my hardware...I really don't want to have to spend money on an upgrade just for one program, especially since most everything else I have works relatively fine.

Thanks for all the answers. I'm still going to mess with it a little to see if i have codec problems or whatnot, but your advice was useful.

AnimeMusicVideos.org

Ideal Processor for Editing?

Ideal Processor for Editing?

Re: Ideal Processor for Editing?