I don't do video editing professionally, but can't stand having lags and slow response times when I am editing some video or whatever, so I looked around and, over a period of several years, kept upgrading various things in my system to make it a pleasure to use. PD helps in this capacity because it has been 99% rock solid for me. Another video editor I had years ago (It rhymes with "Spinnacle Fludio") use to crash ALL. THE. TIME. It was maddening. I thought it might be my system, but after checking various user reviews (something I should have done before I bought it...), crashing is a very common occurrence with that program.

Anyway, for my own personal needs, my setup is great! I have two monitors (My mom gave me her old one when she bought a bigger one so her and my dad can play games on it together - My parents are really cool), and that's nice to have so that I can have the preview full screen while using the main monitor for the timeline, etc. At the time, I couldn't quite afford an i7 so I bought a fast unlocked i5. I can upgrade to an i7 later, but not the newest Haswell i7 because it's a different socket type (1150 instead of 1155). It really irks me sometimes. DDR3 and DDR2 are pin incompatible, so you can't transfer your old memory. Newer CPUs have their own socket configurations, so you can't bring your old processor (usually). It's a conspiracy!

Anyway, my advice is: get the fastest components you can comfortably afford and that make sense for what you are going to use your system for. Lean towards fast storage and lots of memory!

Russell1967 System specs: Windows 7 Professional x64; Gigabyte Z77-DS3H motherboard with i5-3579K 3.8Ghz processor with 32GB RAM; Zotac GTX 760 w/4GB; 1xWestern Digital 1TB 10,000RPM HD; 1x Samsung 840 Pro SSD System Drive

Great chatting with yhou.

I am a retired CIO. Been the busines since the hollerith card. Been through the generations of systems and computers.
Things now are expoentionally exploding and very hard to keep up with the changing technologies.

Just tried to expand my C drive space by adjusting partitions and taking free space from one and adding it to the C drive. Paragon Disk Manager.

Of couse it either gave me or they were there some cross link errors on the C drive. No one seems o know how to fix it with out reformatting the drive - of cours then you have to reinstall all your p;rograms. And I am talking about a lot of programs which were purchased and downloaded - then all the updates.

May need that computer sooner then later!

May have to go and teach at the local Colleges to fund my hobby. May have to open business of video conversion and productions.

Are we haveing fun yet?

Alan

"Great chatting with yhou."

Same here

I think Paragon is the one I use for shrinking/expanding partitions and creating new ones, etc. Never ran into those kinds of errors. They have a commercial version of that program that may be able to tell you exactly what the problem is.

As far as cross-link errors, try running Windows' own scandisk on the C: drive/partition to see if it sees the same errors. Usually it can fix them automatically, too. Then you should be able to do the normal partition shrink with Paragon. Let me know how it goes. (I used to have a program years ago called "Partition Commander" that I really liked, but I can't use it anymore because although it boots, the graphics are completely garbled. I think VTech, the maker, is no longer in business. Oh well, I have a free alternative that works great!

Too bad our hobbies can't always fund themselves!

Russell1967 System specs: Windows 7 Professional x64; Gigabyte Z77-DS3H motherboard with i5-3579K 3.8Ghz processor with 32GB RAM; Zotac GTX 760 w/4GB; 1xWestern Digital 1TB 10,000RPM HD; 1x Samsung 840 Pro SSD System Drive

Did the chkdsk and scandisk did not seem to find anything.

Some have said run them from the cmd promp WHERE YOU ADD A PARAMETER LIKE /R ON THE CHKDSK

It won't let me - says I don't have secutity clerance. Don't figure I am the admin in user controls.

Some have said run it from the command promp. Says I don't have the right permissions to run them. You can add parameters from the command promp.

Alan

If you are the owner (duh!) of the system then you are most likely the system administrator as well. Try this:
In the start menu search box, type cmd and hit Control-Shift-Enter (It will ask you if you want such and such to make changes to your computer. Click Yes). This will open a command console with elevated privileges. Now you can do what you want with CHKDSK - add those parameters, etc.

If not, then for some reason you don't have enough 'permission'. (This should work, though).

Let us know what happens, and if it finds anything.

Russell1967 System specs: Windows 7 Professional x64; Gigabyte Z77-DS3H motherboard with i5-3579K 3.8Ghz processor with 32GB RAM; Zotac GTX 760 w/4GB; 1xWestern Digital 1TB 10,000RPM HD; 1x Samsung 840 Pro SSD System Drive

Quote: Russell,
so, if I have an SSD for just my media, but retain my C drive as is, that will still speed things up? If so, I'm going shopping!

Depends what aspect of PD you expect or desire to speedup. Anything encoding related, highly unlikely, HD I/O is not a throttle point during CPU encoding. Before you spend any bucks, the following pdf walks through a very basic view of disk speed and PD11 and might be of some interest.
http://forum.cyberlink.com/forum/posts/list/25978.page

Do your own test, have PD12 create a disc folder structure on an external USB device vs your C:/ and note any time change with PD12 during CPU encoding of your project. Drive speed difference between these 2 devices will be significant, test the speed for yourself, see if your encode time is faster. Keep in mind, basic H.264 24Mbps video stream is only an I/O rate of ~3MB/sec which is nothing for virtually any drive, read or write, exactly why most cameras creating this format can use a Class 6 SDHC card, a mere 6MB/sec rating.

Jeff

That's true, Jeff. That's why I set mine as my OS drive instead of as a source video/audio drive. This way, your entire system benefits from the increase in speed. The biggest help for me was lots of system memory, though. Having both has made a very noticeable difference in the workability of Windows 7 as a whole and PD specifically. My mom's Windows Vista system is maxed out at 2GB RAM and it is torture (for me) to use. Luckily, she uses it mainly for email, web browsing and hidden object games - Nothing too strenuous.

Russell1967 System specs: Windows 7 Professional x64; Gigabyte Z77-DS3H motherboard with i5-3579K 3.8Ghz processor with 32GB RAM; Zotac GTX 760 w/4GB; 1xWestern Digital 1TB 10,000RPM HD; 1x Samsung 840 Pro SSD System Drive

I haven't checked this, but, does anyone know if PD is built to take advantage of multiple threads/cores? I'll check Task Manager when I get home.

As for video card speedup assistance, my GPU is pretty old (ATI HD4850) and the hardware encoding of PD doesn't seem to work with certain operations on my system (I have the latest drivers). I've thought of upgrading my vid-card to take better advantage of the GPU accelerator features of PD, but I can't find a cheap (~$150) one that is also better than the one I already have. Any suggestions?

Russell1967 System specs: Windows 7 Professional x64; Gigabyte Z77-DS3H motherboard with i5-3579K 3.8Ghz processor with 32GB RAM; Zotac GTX 760 w/4GB; 1xWestern Digital 1TB 10,000RPM HD; 1x Samsung 840 Pro SSD System Drive