Processing HD video

[-Tenk-]

So i'm getting a Go Pro in a couple of weeks. It records 720p and 1020p HD footage from a mount on your car/bike/whatever. Awesome stuff

Anyway, my question is: what is it that determines the processing and playback of HD video on a PC?

I've got a crappy old computer with a single core 3.2GHz processor, 2GB RAM, 1GB video card (an old 3650 series I think....). Will it handle it?

If i'm building a new computer, what would I need to efficiently handle High Def video?

 

[Oreo]

It depends. Watching 720p is a whole different story to editing 720p. The bitrate of the Go Pro cam will be fairly low. Bitrate is the amount of data per second, commercial 1080p HD cameras record at around 50mb/s, High end consumer ones are 24mb/s, The go pro will probably be around 12 to 17mb/s. The higher the bitrate the faster your PC needs to be.

Lots of software used to edit and watch HD video these days uses your GPU for playing back the video, to free up your CPU so you can do other stuff on lower end machines.

What would help is if you searched for "How to DxDiag" on Google. Do that, and then post the information here. That gives us a good breakdown of your system. But to be honest, you should be fine. I can't imagine you having any problems really.

If you want a nice fast machine for edditing your HD video clips, a low/medium end quad core and 4gb of ram would be a good way to go. Even a dual core would be a good improvement over your single core cpu, and they can be picked up really cheap these days - as can ram.

 

[-Tenk-]

1080p is 12mb/s . 720p is 7.5mb/s for a Go Pro...

I'll post back with my system details later.

 

[-Tenk-]

Ok, ran the dxdiag on my old clunker. Its a bit outdated because I've had it connected to the internet maybe 3 times over the 5 years i've owned it. It only gets updates from games I load onto it.


Operating System: Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition (5.1, Build 2600)
Manufacturer: Acer
System Model: Aspire SA85
BIOS: Phoenix – AwardBIOS v6.00PG
Processor: Intel(R) Celeron(R) D CPU 3.20GHz
Memory: 2048MB RAM
Page File: 270MB used: 2299MB available
DirectX Version: DirectX 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904)

Display:
Device:
Name: ATI Radeon HD 3600 Series
Manufacturer: ATI Technologies
Chip Type: ATI display adapter AGP (0x9598)
DAC Type: Internal DAC (400MHz)
Approx. Total Memory: 1024 MB
Current Display Mode: 1152x864 (32 bit) (60Hz)

Drivers:
Main Driver: ati2dvag.dll
Version: 6.14.0010.6999
Date: 14/08/2009

I'm planning to edit and maybe do a few other minor things to the video (some basic transitions or text). Will my computer handle it? What do I need to do this kind of thing effectively? RAM? Multi Cores? A quality GPU? Or a mixture thereof?

Thanks!

 

[Oreo]

1080p is 12mb/s . 720p is 7.5mb/s for a Go Pro...

I'll post back with my system details later.

Ok, ran the dxdiag on my old clunker. Its a bit outdated because I've had it connected to the internet maybe 3 times over the 5 years i've owned it. It only gets updates from games I load onto it.


Operating System: Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition (5.1, Build 2600)
Manufacturer: Acer
System Model: Aspire SA85
BIOS: Phoenix – AwardBIOS v6.00PG
Processor: Intel(R) Celeron(R) D CPU 3.20GHz
Memory: 2048MB RAM
Page File: 270MB used: 2299MB available
DirectX Version: DirectX 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904)

Display:
Device:
Name: ATI Radeon HD 3600 Series
Manufacturer: ATI Technologies
Chip Type: ATI display adapter AGP (0x9598)
DAC Type: Internal DAC (400MHz)
Approx. Total Memory: 1024 MB
Current Display Mode: 1152x864 (32 bit) (60Hz)

Drivers:
Main Driver: ati2dvag.dll
Version: 6.14.0010.6999
Date: 14/08/2009

I'm planning to edit and maybe do a few other minor things to the video (some basic transitions or text). Will my computer handle it? What do I need to do this kind of thing effectively? RAM? Multi Cores? A quality GPU? Or a mixture thereof?

Thanks!

Uhh, thats quite a low bitrate - 12mbps should look pretty good i guess, but then i have high standards . Oh well, that means it's easier for you to watch and edit.

You don't really need a better system for edditing video, as long as it will play smoothly. It's just the faster your PC is, the faster and quicker the edditing can be done. A slower PC you will have to wait longer to apply effects and stuff, and it'll be more sluggish. What is especially demanding is when you have 3 or 4 HD clips that you want to edit together, this requires loading all 4 clips into RAM (And HD video clips at a high bitrate will run into the hundreds of megabytes in just a few minutes). So if you don't have enough ram, it'll really start to bog down. Also if you want to live edit clips, whereby you pause a clip, change something like saturation or sharpness and then play it back straight away before processing the video, this is quite demanding on your CPU.

I would say your single core CPU and 2gb of ram would be the main problem. As you can see, you are right on the edge of the minimum system requirements for playing back the video.

What are the minimum computer system requirements to be able to handle full 1080p or 720 60fps video files?

For Windows-based computers, we require:

Windows Vista or later
3.2 GHz Pentium 4 or faster
Direct X 9.0c or Later
At least 2 GB of system RAM
Video card with at least 256MB of RAM

That is from the GoPro website.

I would give you a few hardware reccomendations, but in all honesty if you go to the PC Hardware section of this forum and ask for a build to be made for HD Video edditing the guys there will be more than happy to give you a full system build or just a few key upgrades, there are some very knowledgeable members over there which would give you the best build for your buck Just let them know what you have told me and your budget.

 

[uzi9mm]

Just FYI, like posted above playing HD footage is a completely different ballpark when it comes to editing HD footage.

1st off you need a video editing solution that will "digest" the HD video. The program will either convert it to something else it can edit or just take it in as such. Or it will just tell you invalid format and you will be left to convert formats on your own.

Also just because it has a low bit rate does not mean less processing power, in fact in means you should NEED MORE processing power. Your computer has to decompress and decode that data, and GoPro's HD record in AVC H264 format, which is a VERY processor intensive format. (to play it and esp to edit)

My conclusion: to smoothly playback and edit, you should be able to pull off 720P... but do not count on doing the same for 1080P.

(if I repeated any other information or suggestions sorry.... I skimmed thru the thread because I am at work... I am just throwing out some previous exp that I have, I record and edit AVCHD 1080/30P with Premiere CS5 and it makes my i7 930 work hard)

 

[-Tenk-]

Thanks Uzi,

I'm planning to have my new machine up and running by the time I get the go pro. It should be able to handle the processing requirements well and truely. I know some people that manage to edit (just roughly mind you, none of this fancy transitions or layering or anything ) on some pretty crappy computers.

Even if I don't get it running by then, I'll just use my old machine at 720p... Longer record time More awesomeness I can capture on film

Thanks again mate.

 

[Oreo]

Thanks Uzi,

I'm planning to have my new machine up and running by the time I get the go pro. It should be able to handle the processing requirements well and truely. I know some people that manage to edit (just roughly mind you, none of this fancy transitions or layering or anything ) on some pretty crappy computers.

Even if I don't get it running by then, I'll just use my old machine at 720p... Longer record time More awesomeness I can capture on film

Thanks again mate.

At the end of the day you could actually edit HD Video on pretty much any PC in the last 5 years, maybe more. It's just a matter of how long you are willing to wait to do stuff. From the sounds of it, you are doing very light edditing. But if you are edditing huge files from prosumer cameras which are recording at 50mbps and are hours long - you are going to want a much faster PC so you are not waiting around for as long. As uzi said, converting some video files can take anything from 30seconds to several hours depending on the complexity of the conversion and the PC you are using.

 

[uzi9mm]

At the end of the day you could actually edit HD Video on pretty much any PC in the last 5 years, maybe more. It's just a matter of how long you are willing to wait to do stuff..

Exactly, kmanmx hit it on the nose.... Sometimes you edit right before you go to sleep and it will render all night while you sleep

But like you said -Tenk-, if you are just going to stick to simple editing, you should be good.