Super video processing PC

[Younggun]

Watching vids from the Slo Mo Guys on YouTube and after processing some videos myself I always wondered what it took to process and edit what they shoot.

Came across this video covering an upgrade to their computer. It's kinda long but you can skip to the last 10 minutes or so to see than testing out the new horsepower. Nerdy, but I ended up watching the whole thing.

[video]

 

[karlac]

WOW! Feel his pain, BTDT, sort of ... in another time warp.

Because there was not all that much available then, built my own audio/video workstations for my commercial music recording studio years back (up to 2009), for both audio (32 track) and music video production ... one of the first analog and digital studios in Houston.

In a nutshell, best possible worlds was a box with dual processors, running software (Vegas Pro) on and OS (Win NT/2000) that would take advantage of both processors.

Used Vegas Pro for both audio video, instead of ProTools, (to this day still don't like what ProTools does to recorded music).

Thanks for posting ...

 

[Younggun]

I use Movie Studio Platinum to edit videos. What's crazy is the Windows Movie Maker seems to do a better job of preserving frame rates when slowing down 120 or 240FPS.

Processing videos can get pretty slow though and I've always cringed at what an"good" computer costs. I'd stroke out in the process of spending 8K for upgrades, but was also impressed at the power the computer had and the amount of data it was dealing with. My computer will choke trying to play 1080P at 60 frames, he's playing 4K uncompressed.

Really impressed by th data a computer can handle if you got the money.

Of course, one of the cameras they use costs $150K and another is around $80K so I guess 8K in the computer is relatively reasonable.

 

[Younggun]

I was also surprised he used a PC when you hear so much about Mac being the best. No judgment because I don't know enough about computers, but expected an Apple logo.

 

[karlac]

The audio/video workstations I built ran about $3.5k in just parts, and that was pretty pricey for the times.

The real money/cost was in the analog to digital converters, and the digital recorders (had four, 8 track digital machines, run in sync, feeding 32 digital tracks to the workstation, where both recording/dubbing and editing was done).

Then, as now, state-of-the-art audio/video production ain't cheap ... although it is relatively amazing what can be done with an affordable computer and cheaper software these days.

 

[karlac]

I was also surprised he used a PC when you hear so much about Mac being the best. No judgment because I don't know enough about computers, but expected an Apple logo.

PC's are pretty much open platforms when it comes to hotrodding one for audio/video production, as well as avialable software ... can't do that with an Apple box.

You're at Apple's mercy when it comes to hardware and software. What works today, might not work tomorrow, the kiss of death for an A/V production studio.

BTDT ... Ask anyone who ever built a business on Apple's "Final Cut", only to have Apple barf all over it.

 

[Younggun]

Wasn't aware of that. I know the phones tend to be more locked down but didn't realize the computers were also picky.

I can imagine the pain of video processing when things were going from analog to digital. Relatively easy now that you record something and just transfer the file.

I can do a lot with Studio Platinum using a run of the mill laptop and it handles it ok. When I start merging clips, motion tracking, fading, etc to create a video the rendering can take an hour for a few minutes of final video. I've tried working with 2.7K once and it wasn't worth the hassle. It gave me some ability to digitally zoom in editing and still have 720 or 1080p resolution in the final cut but rendering was a matter of leaving the computer overnight and hoping it didn't crash.

 

[karlac]

Been awhile since I was on the bleeding edge, but RAM, cpu cycles, high end graphic subsystem (now with their own processors) and disk throughput (SSD) are still the key to that type of digital processing/editing.

The state-of-art multiple core, single processors that can be put in today's machines, and SSD drives should give a big advantage over the days of two processors in one machine.

As always, you just have to spend the bucks ... a caveat is that the software has to have the ability to take advantage of a multi processor environment. Hard to tell if that's the case when shopping for consumer editing software.

 

[Renegade]

Do not have any fancy hardware, but I have kept benchmarks of video processing. This is too encode a video from my HD camcorder using Handbrake:

Make/Model CPU Clock Time
PowerSpec G351 Intel i7-8700K 6C 3.70/64 544
Dell XPS8300 Intel i7-2600 4C 3.40/64 652
Apple iMAC Intel i7 4C 2.80/64 687
Apple iMAC Intel i7 4C 3.10/64 781
Dell XPS8300 Intel i7-2600 4C 3.40/32 1355
Dell T5500 Intel 5506 4C 2.20/32 2199
Dell Inspiron 537 Intel E5200 2C 2.50/32 3557
Apple MacBookPro Intel Core 2C 2.53/64 3872
HP G60-235DX Intel Core 2C 2.00/32 6071

HP a817n Intel P4 3.20/32 41264​

 

[Younggun]

Not sure what those numbers mean. Is there a laymans translation?

 

[karlac]

Bit hazy myself, but "Clock time" could have a couple of meanings depending upon the context.
I'd be guessing in this case reflects the difference between the time at which a task finishes and when it started, including whether it was 32 or 64 bit?
Could be all wet ...

 

[Renegade]

Not sure what those numbers mean. Is there a laymans translation?

It mean formatting did not work.

The i7 cpus made huge gains, but now performance improvements is smaller. My last upgrade netted 16% improvement.

Last number is seconds, lower is better.

Columns should have reflected this:

Make/Model - PowerSpec G351 (MicroCenter)
CPU - Intel i7-8700K 6C (latest generation with 6 Cores)
Clock - 3.70/64 (3.7GHz Clock, 64 bit)
Time - 544 (seconds to complete, lower is better).