If you have a quad core PC and an HD capable video card then there is no need for proxy editing. PD uses what's called Shadow files which are low resolution versions of the original AVCHD videos. By default this feature is turned on. When you load an AVCHD file into the library PD will begin to build the shadow files. You will notice a yellow icon appear over the clips and then turn green when the shadow files are created.

There have been some issues with shadow files for some members and that is why I recommend not using the shadow files if your computer is up to it. It can be turned off in preferences and it is called "enable file processing". Q9300 2.5 GHz
4 GB Ram
Nvidia 9800 GT

Hi EditMode-001,
Everything depends upon the specifications of your PC and the video files you're editing.
For example a core duo set up will struggle but will cope with 720p footage and without the shadow file on IF you have a good graphics card. It will not cope with a 1080p footage under the same conditions, likely to crash etc.

Quad is the minimum spec for 1080 footage and a i7 set up is the better option by far.

As James has already mentioned, Shadow Files can cause problems for editors - lots of issues here on the forum. Often editors fail to allow sufficient time for the edit files to be generated. Shadow file generation is so slow and ..... causes no end of hassles.

Take a look here: http://forum.cyberlink.com/forum/posts/list/8445.page

Image guide here: http://forum.cyberlink.com/forum/posts/list/9621.page#41702

Thank you for starting a new post.

Dafydd
[Moderator]

thanks, James & Dafydd. (thx for the links, regarding shadow/proxy rendering, Dafydd)

I was planning on using an i7 system from BOXX Technologies
http://www.boxxtech.com/products/goBOXX/goboxx_overview.asp

What Video card do you suggest, for both rendering the video files (AVCHD) and also supporting CAD work.
I was also thinking of using it for Solidworks CAD design -
Cost isn't an issue, I need the fastest system possible.

I'm hoping it could be in a laptop system, unless a desktop unit is the better choice.

I'm glad to hear AVCHD will render correctly in an i7 unit without any degrading of image quality. Are you absolutely sure?

I've had people from other editing sites say, even with an i7 system, AVCHD files aren't meant to be edited directly, and need those smaller versions of the files to create the "edit list", or the final output will not look like HDTV content.

For video editing I would recommend an ATI card in the 59xx or 58xx series. These cards typicaly cost several hundred dollars, but if money is not a concern the that would be the best. For CAD work I really can not say. Consummer cards are primarly designed to push pixels across the screen as fast as possible for gaming. CAD requires greater precision so depending on your exact needs you may require a more professional card for that purpose. This is something your going to have to research. Q9300 2.5 GHz
4 GB Ram
Nvidia 9800 GT

Quote: For video editing I would recommend an ATI card in the 59xx or 58xx series. These cards typicaly cost several hundred dollars, but if money is not a concern the that would be the best. For CAD work I really can not say. Consummer cards are primarly designed to push pixels across the screen as fast as possible for gaming. CAD requires greater precision so depending on your exact needs you may require a more professional card for that purpose. This is something your going to have to research.

thanks again James, yes, i'm going to have to see if a card supports both the options I need.

I always thought if a fancy "CAD grade" display card was used, it would also support video editing too, but, maybe I'm wrong.

Yeah! ... more research is needed

I'll see what the techs at BOXX say about it... I'm not planning on getting two different units for the separate uses, that's just too much to buy

I have a friend of mine who build a desktop PC last summer for Autocad and he is using a consummer grade graphics card. As far as I know he does not have any issues, but he is not working as an engineer either. Q9300 2.5 GHz
4 GB Ram
Nvidia 9800 GT

Quote: I have a friend of mine who build a desktop PC last summer for Autocad and he is using a consummer grade graphics card. As far as I know he does not have any issues, but he is not working as an engineer either.

thanks, i thought so too!

the BOXX Technologies company seems to have a recommended system for CAD work, according to Solidworks company, and they also have a recommended one for Video Editing, I have to get the one, "in between" the two - unless the fancy CAD card is good enough for the editing software as well.

One would think a graphics card costing near $1000.00 USD would be.!

side note - it's not that money isn't an issue, it is, but not for the system - I was holding back from getting the fancy camera, to have the best system for both CAD Design and HDTV Video Editing, so the first thing done, or made using it could pay for the fancy camera, later on.

I figured, if I waited to get a broadcast quality pro camera for 5k USD, and concentrated on the system to do both CAD and Editing work, the computer would stay "current" longer, and in time I'd be able to get the better camera if my editing skills allowed, and PBS liked my videos.

the Canon HFs10 is really as close to broadcast as i've seen, but, if the editing software screws up the image detail, or color, it's going to look like it was taken with an ordinary standard camcorder. The margin is too close at just 24Mbps to allow any degrading of the final HD output file.

G'day EditMode-001 -

Somehow the discussion has shifted from proxy editing to CAD vs video set-ups. You could change the topic heading... it's not become irrelevant! Alternatively, you could start a new topic.

A young friend of mine uses CAD software in his work. He also needs to use it at home (studying part-time - post grad architecture)... but he's also a gamer. Even though the workstations he uses at work are specifically set up for design, he wanted a system at home that could do both.

Here are a couple of links I pointed him to, at the time:

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/246658-33-gaming-professional-graphics-cards

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/263129-33-solidworks-gaming

What James mentioned about speed vs accuracy was important when he was recently upgrading his home PC. He chose a high end gaming GPU (ATI 5850), on the basis that it was great for gaming & did a pretty good job with design work.

It's all beyond me, but he knew what he was talking about.

Cheers - Tony



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Quote: G'day EditMode-001 -

Somehow the discussion has shifted from proxy editing to CAD vs video set-ups. You could change the topic heading... it's not become irrelevant! Alternatively, you could start a new topic.

A young friend of mine uses CAD software in his work. He also needs to use it at home (studying part-time - post grad architecture)... but he's also a gamer. Even though the workstations he uses at work are specifically set up for design, he wanted a system at home that could do both.

Here are a couple of links I pointed him to, at the time:

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/246658-33-gaming-professional-graphics-cards

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/263129-33-solidworks-gaming

What James mentioned about speed vs accuracy was important when he was recently upgrading his home PC. He chose a high end gaming GPU (ATI 5850), on the basis that it was great for gaming & did a pretty good job with design work.

It's all beyond me, but he knew what he was talking about.

Cheers - Tony

thanks, Tony,
- this was what I was talking about, YOUR expertise of where to find the info.
it's really a big help when needing to choose what graphics card to get.

without the correct info, and experience of others, good and bad, I could also make a bad choice.

I changed the subject of this thread to reflect the two subjects within here, as you suggested.


edit ---
i just had a look at the links, the one about CAD is not discussing Video Editing with the Graphics Card, rather, just CAD and Gaming, & posted in 2009. New cards are out as close to one month ago, so, I need newer info

the other one is from 2007, mostly about good Gaming Cards.

I guess not many users needed a setup like I needed, so, I'll have to discuss it with solidworks, and BOXX technologies, and maybe also Cyberlink customer support, I don't want to make you nice people go crazy with my systems specs.

thanks for posting the links, it's still interesting to read and has good info.

I think you have to get your system spec sorted, primarily exactly what you need, an HD editing box (really not portable as HD files are large and quickly consume HDD space) or portable CAD box where disk speed and capacity isn't an issue. Also consider USB3.0 is here which may afford a portable uncompressed HD capture solution in the future if that is something you are looking at.

As for graphics cards all of the professional cards are designed with professional apps in mind from CAD to DCC to video editing. I believe ATI are slightly ahead in these stakes, but it again depends apon what you are doing as the Quadro cards *have* consistantly beatern the ATI cards in synthetic benchmarks in Solidworks when compared like for like, but the new ATI V8800 might have changed this.

There are plenty of review sites to check out, but when you look for them they will be generally based around professional workstation boards using multiprocessor/multicore CPUs. If you are planning on SLI(Nvidia) or CrossFire(ATI) tread carefully as the newer AMD boards will not support SLI (not surprising). You cannot beat this kind of setup for HD video editing, the more cores the better coupled with CUDA or AVT. AFAIK AVT has more functionality in PowerDirector when it comes to encoding.

If I were going to do it no holes barred I would be looking at an ASUSKGPE-D16 MB using dual 12cores andthe SAS2.0 PIKE, throw in a ATI FirePro V8800 and as much DDR3 as one could afford all in a nice rackmount SAS 600 backplane case, the whole lot in a well ventilated cupboard so I didn't have to see it Oh and a couple of nice 30" moniors for good measure (good for both PowerDirector and Solidworks)

Stop yawning, I could go on....

Richard


Richard

Camera Canon HG21 PAL, PD-Ultra v8.00.2508
PC Asus KFN32-D SLI, Dual Opteron 2216, 4GB ECC Registered, Nvidia Quadro FX5600 Driver v181.20, Vista x64 Ultimate SP2, Plenty of fast HDD Space.

Thanks, Richard, this was the type of info, and opinions I was looking for

Some more "lookin' 'round" is needed before diving into my new system.

YES! - i had forgotten about the new USB3.0 - very few boards, or laptops support this new standard yet.

Quote: dual 12cores

did you mean dual 2 cores?

also, the info on the new ATI vs. Nvidia boards, much appreciated.

Portability is what I'm mostly looking for. A laptop with the speed and power of a desktop system - I'm tired of being tied to the desk.

did you check out the BOXX laptop system I was considering?
http://www.boxxtech.com/products/goBOXX/goboxx_overview.asp

I was thinking of using a portable usb drive to have the edits go to,
so the smaller laptop internal drive wouldn't be much of a problem.
The external drive could be for storing and working with the files for CAD and Videos.

Time for me to check out those review sites you mentioned

thanks again... i see now, I can't be in a rush to get this system.

Quote: I think you have to get your system spec sorted, primarily exactly what you need, an HD editing box (really not portable as HD files are large and quickly consume HDD space) or portable CAD box where disk speed and capacity isn't an issue. Also consider USB3.0 is here which may afford a portable uncompressed HD capture solution in the future if that is something you are looking at.

As for graphics cards all of the professional cards are designed with professional apps in mind from CAD to DCC to video editing. I believe ATI are slightly ahead in these stakes, but it again depends apon what you are doing as the Quadro cards *have* consistantly beatern the ATI cards in synthetic benchmarks in Solidworks when compared like for like, but the new ATI V8800 might have changed this.

There are plenty of review sites to check out, but when you look for them they will be generally based around professional workstation boards using multiprocessor/multicore CPUs. If you are planning on SLI(Nvidia) or CrossFire(ATI) tread carefully as the newer AMD boards will not support SLI (not surprising). You cannot beat this kind of setup for HD video editing, the more cores the better coupled with CUDA or AVT. AFAIK AVT has more functionality in PowerDirector when it comes to encoding.

If I were going to do it no holes barred I would be looking at an ASUSKGPE-D16 MB using dual 12cores andthe SAS2.0 PIKE, throw in a ATI FirePro V8800 and as much DDR3 as one could afford all in a nice rackmount SAS 600 backplane case, the whole lot in a well ventilated cupboard so I didn't have to see it Oh and a couple of nice 30" moniors for good measure (good for both PowerDirector and Solidworks)

Stop yawning, I could go on....

Richard

Yes I meant 12 cores (24 cores all up) blow your pants away rendering on solidworks or other multi-threaded renderer. Checkout places like the 3Dprofessor, hardforum, guru3D and 2CPU.

USB3.0 will allow for fast (200MB/s+) external RAID solutions, much faster than the current firewire and esata which only runs at SATA1 speed. There is a new firewire in the pipeline, but I can only imagine that alot more stuff will be made to support USB3.0 as USB is everywhere.

I run a 4 disk nvraid mode 0 array (suicide mode) to get as much speed as possible for video editing and achieve around 150MB/s read write and have found it not fast enough for video editing especially with multiple PIP tracks, but it sure beats running from a single 7200RPM sata drive. My next step up will be to go to an external RAID5 or RAID6 solution, at least it will give me some data security compared with what I am running now and a dramatically faster editing feel.

I have always liked to build my own systems and have never much cared for off the shelf solutions, it is part of the fun for me.

Richard Richard

Camera Canon HG21 PAL, PD-Ultra v8.00.2508
PC Asus KFN32-D SLI, Dual Opteron 2216, 4GB ECC Registered, Nvidia Quadro FX5600 Driver v181.20, Vista x64 Ultimate SP2, Plenty of fast HDD Space.

12 freaken cores? (24 in all) - that's amazing, must be wild expensive for the mobo. - can you give me an idea of the benchmarks for such a board? (vs. - the standard i7 system), does this mean there are multi i7 CPU's or is this a totally new processor going on?

I just entered "the 3Dprofessor, hardforum, guru3D and 2CPU" to my places to look. and gave you 5 stars for the post.

what do you know about Sony Vegas Pro 9 - they say it works directly with the AVCHD files without needing proxy (shadow) files for editing without HD screwing of the original file outputs (cyberlink says the same for PD8 )

maybe i'll get Vegas Pro 9 instead... don't know yet - no reply from cyberlink so far (since May 2nd, 2010) regarding my return of PDVD10 Ultra during the 30-day guarantee.

Quote: Yes I meant 12 cores (24 cores all up) blow your pants away rendering on solidworks or other multi-threaded renderer. Checkout places like the 3Dprofessor, hardforum, guru3D and 2CPU.

USB3.0 will allow for fast (200MB/s+) external RAID solutions, much faster than the current firewire and esata which only runs at SATA1 speed. There is a new firewire in the pipeline, but I can only imagine that alot more stuff will be made to support USB3.0 as USB is everywhere.

I run a 4 disk nvraid mode 0 array (suicide mode) to get as much speed as possible for video editing and achieve around 150MB/s read write and have found it not fast enough for video editing especially with multiple PIP tracks, but it sure beats running from a single 7200RPM sata drive. My next step up will be to go to an external RAID5 or RAID6 solution, at least it will give me some data security compared with what I am running now and a dramatically faster editing feel.

I have always liked to build my own systems and have never much cared for off the shelf solutions, it is part of the fun for me.

Richard

I have to admit, I'm enjoying reading this thread.
I had to laugh (out loud) at the 12 and 24 core input from Richard - that's the way to go.

Recently my eldest son was using a super computer, he was allocated 512 CPU's to run his special computational display and engineering program, out of the 10,000+ it had. I was tempted to ask him to install PD8 and give me the backdoor access.... oh I dream.

CyberLink don't deal with the refund BUT if you haven't heard soon, send me all the info (full name, email address and order number) and I'll see what's happening asap.

Thanks everyone, please keep posting.

Dafydd

Ha HA! ha ! .. so, it's an april fools joke?

12 core and 24 core - can I take back the 5 stars I gave him?
just joking

thanks, Dafydd, maybe i'll get the refund first and see what system I get to actually use the software on, so I can test it on that machine rather than my 23bit WinXP.

I'll PM the info to you now!

Quote: I have to admit, I'm enjoying reading this thread.
I had to laugh (out loud) at the 12 and 24 core input from Richard - that's the way to go.

Recently my eldest son was using a super computer, he was allocated 512 CPU's to run his special computational display and engineering program, out of the 10,000+ it had. I was tempted to ask him to install PD8 and give me the backdoor access.... oh I dream.

CyberLink don't deal with the refund BUT if you haven't heard soon, send me all the info (full name, email address and order number) and I'll see what's happening asap.

Thanks everyone, please keep posting.

Dafydd

Quote: Ha HA! ha ! .. so, it's an april fools joke?

No joke...
http://www.amd.com/us/products/server/processors/6000-series-platform/pages/6000-series-model-number-methodology.aspx


I will not comment on other NLE video editing packages, except to the extent that PD8 punches way above its weight in this $ segment of the market and does an excellent job in AVCHD rendering.

Dafydd, it would be nice to have access to a render farm, but us mere mortals have to make do with quad cores or lesser. It wasn't that long ago that none of this would have been possible on a desktop PC and the latest SGI machine would have struggled under the workload.

Just for fun
MB asus KGPE-D16 $450
PIKE 8-port SAS2 6G RAID card $80-$100
CPU opteron 6176 SE x 2 $3000
MEMORY DDR3 1333 UDIMM with ECC x2gb x8 $95ea $760
VIDEO ATI CrossFire V8800 a cheap $1500 (shoud by two lol)
CASE norco 24 bay 19" rack hotswap SAS2.0 $2500
HDD Seagate constellation 2TB SAS2.0 x8 $3600
SSD drive for OS $160
MONITROS Dell 3007WFP x2 ~$3000
POWER SUPPLY PCP&C 960W $250

+ the usual
BD Burner $350
MISC heatsinks, fans, K/B, Mouse, 3Dconnexion motion controller $1000
Software $$$$
COOL $16650, I will take 2 it will be fun.


Richard

Camera Canon HG21 PAL, PD-Ultra v8.00.2508
PC Asus KFN32-D SLI, Dual Opteron 2216, 4GB ECC Registered, Nvidia Quadro FX5600 Driver v181.20, Vista x64 Ultimate SP2, Plenty of fast HDD Space.

MISC heatsinks, fans, K/B, Mouse, 3Dconnexion motion controller $1000

I think I paid more than that for the new fan system installed here but maybe I shouldn't have believed the salesguy?

http://forum.cyberlink.com/forum/posts/list/10760.page#47992

Cheers
Adrian Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated. (see below)
Confucius
AMD Phenom IIX6 1055T, win10, 5 internal drives, 7 usb drives, struggling power supply.

Ahhh, you guys don't need cooling you should be using your rigs to keep your houses warm....

Richard

Camera Canon HG21 PAL, PD-Ultra v8.00.2508
PC Asus KFN32-D SLI, Dual Opteron 2216, 4GB ECC Registered, Nvidia Quadro FX5600 Driver v181.20, Vista x64 Ultimate SP2, Plenty of fast HDD Space.

Richard,
I haven't had an NDA from you..... Have you received my email?
Dafydd
[Moderator]