[Wylug-discuss] Linux-specific buying advice - system purely for video editing/encoding/rendering

[Paul Brook]

> > Your editing machine is likely to want fast disks, and lots of memory so
> > that you can cache large amounts of the source file as you're moving
> > around. Lots of CPU cores aren't likely to help a lot here. Given your
> > description of the source material I wouldn't expect the graphics card
> > to make a whole lot of difference. Even the most basic graphics card
> > should be more than sufficient for video playback.
> 
> I've got several "most basic" graphic cards, and they are all
> incapable of scrolling *quickly* back and forth to edit points.

On modern cards (I'm talking Geforce 8x/Radeon HD3x or later) video decode is 
done by dedicated hardware. I'd expect this hardware to be the same on both 
low-and high-end cards. Of course if your software (both editor/player and 
card driver) doesn't support hardware offload then this hardware is completely 
useless. My guess is that video editors might not use hardware offload as they 
want to move backwards and forwards, rather than just streaming video to the 
screen.

Remember that hardware manufacturers are obliged to prevent you seeing the 
output of the video decoder if they want to be part of a certified blue-ray 
system.

Paul