Editing
Video on Your Home PC
Let's face it-no one wants to sit
through all seven hours of your
video coverage of junior's first
birthday. A nicely edited half-hour
highlight reel, on the other hand,
just might make the grandparents
ecstatic.
Fortunately, falling prices on digital
video software and hardware have
made editing home videos on your
own PC a real possibility. Thousands
of computer users are investing
in upgrades or entirely new systems
capable of digital video editing.
Apple computer reports that 150,000
people downloaded the free iMovie
software during the first week it
was available. Unfortunately, users
with older, slower system are finding
that the amount of time it takes
to create a video masterpiece makes
the process a lot less fun than
they thought it would be.
File
Size Frustrations
The primary reason for this growing
frustration is the sheer size of
video files. Think of it this way:
each pixel on your video screen
takes up three bytes of storage
space (one each for red, green,
and blue). Multiply those three
bytes times 480 x 640 resolution
and 30 frames per second, and a
one-minute uncompressed video file
could require up to 1.6 gigabytes!
Compression software can make the
file much more manageable, but your
raw footage is still going to be
a huge file.
To
deal with these large files, experts
almost always suggest a very large
hard drive. While a large hard drive
solves the problem of storing the
file, it doesn't help with the slow
processing time. To speed up things,
you'll want a fast processor and
a lot of RAM.
Video
editing software packages such as
iMovie and Adobe Premiere typically
recommend 64MB of RAM. However,
if your computer has only 64MB of
RAM or less, you will probably spend
a lot of time waiting while your
computer retrieves information from
your hard drive.
Test
Results
To see exactly how a RAM upgrade
can affect desktop video editing,
memoryX Technology's own Performance
Labs ran tests using Content Creation
Winstone 2000. Content Creation
Winstone is a benchmark program
used to test system performance
on computer's using multimedia creation
applications, including the popular
Adobe Premiere desktop video software.
In
memoryX's tests, upgrading from
64MB to 128MB gave up to a 52% increase
in system performance. Upgrading
to 256MB improved performance up
to 102.5%, and 384MB yield up to
a 115% increase! For complete benchmark
results click here.
memoryX's
Recommendations
When it comes to desktop video editing,
the more RAM you have, the better.
To speed things up, you'll probably
want at least 128MB of RAM, and
memoryX recommends 256MB or more.
After all, the less time it takes
to edit your home movies, the more
likely you are to do it. And the
end result is more interesting videos
you and your family will enjoy watching
for years to come.
