Building Your Own Inexpensive Home Editing Suite

Posted by Derek · April 22nd, 2008

As a beginning video editor just learning the ropes, it may seem impractical to build up your own editing suite in your home or apartment. I agree, if you are comfortable doing your limited-scale editing on your home PC or Mac. However, if you decide to get more advanced and find yourself limited by the hardware you have, it might be time to upgrade to a home editing system that can cater to your more professional needs.

I would like to share with the reader some tips for creating a home editing suite, as I have done in my apartment, and hopefully show that, for not a lot of money and time, you can increase efficiency of your editing system.

First off, the obvious question: Mac or PC? The obvious answer: If you have a solid chunk of change you are going to put into your system and are comfortable with Final Cut Studio and other Mac software, by all means go for Mac. The new Mac desktops have super fast Intel processors in dual-core and quad-core arrangements. Splurge on the system, buy two 17’’ or 19’’ monitors, and you are set.

But I would like to suggest that if you don’t have $5,000 to spend on a system you can get a really great editing system using PC and second/hand equipment. Let me share how:

First of all, you need to decide what kind of PC to get. If you are comfortable building your own system, then buy the components and you will save money by cutting out the middle man. If you don’t want to (or can’t) build you own system, look online for Dell or HP workstations. If you are serious about editing, you need to get a desktop. Laptops are designed to be portable and efficient, but for the price, they perform much slower than desktops.

You want to concentrate on three main elements on your desktop:

1. High capacity FAST hard drive. SATA 2 drives are very cheap now and with Native Command Queuing (NCQ) you can get a lot better performance out of SATA rather than ATAPI (IDE) drives. I recommend at least 250 Gig.

2. Lots of memory. Having at least 3 GB of RAM is a must for serious video editors. RAM is also cheap now, and most motherboards support Dual-Channel which effectively doubles the memory bandwidth. Main Verdict: Get a lot of RAM.

3. Fast processor. The processor does all the number crunching, which for video editors basically boils down to rendering. Go with the Intel chips; they are faster and more reliable right now than AMD. I recommend a Core 2 Duo or Quad-core.

These are the three big ones, don’t worry so much about graphics cards, they really don’t affect video editing that much, and you can save a lot by getting a lower end card.

Now that you have a system than can handle the latest and greatest editing programs, you need to have the proper ways to view them. No editing suite is complete without two monitors (or one HUGE one). Why two monitors you ask? Most monitors fall somewhere in the 17’’ to 20’’ range and are simply not large enough to display all the options you want on the screen at one time. This causes the editor to have to hide toolbars they frequently address, make viewing monitors very small, and constantly struggle with making windows big enough but not too big. Getting two monitors is a great way to maximize efficiency and I promise you will immediately question how you ever edited with only one. Also, you don’t have to go with flat panel if you don’t have the money. Large CRT’s are like $20 and if you have the space then do it, they serve the same purpose in the end.

I also recommend a separate color-corrected TV monitor. I bought mine used off Craigslist for $50. New they can be upwards of $600. The purpose is to show you what the final product is going to look like on a TV screen rather than your monitor, which probably isn’t corrected for color and viewing dimensions the way TV’s are.

Most professional editing suites have DV capture decks, but if you have a mini DV camcorder like I do, you can use it as a deck instead (i.e. plug it via firewire and capture/export to tape). DV decks are like $1000; mini DV camcorders are like $250; so do what makes the most financial sense.

I have included a picture of my setup. I bought most of my equipment secondhand and saved a bunch off a brand new system. I highly recommend this approach for those out there getting serious with editing working on a limited budget.

Editing suite pic

Do you have questions or need advice about your system? E-mail me at derek@mindbites.com and I will be happy to answer.

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