video editing

Does anyone know the best graphics card for video editing? Or should I get a video card (are they the same thing?) And how big a roll does the hard drive play? thanks

Any ideas folks?

I've done video editing in college on many machines.

For a lot of video editing out there you will see people using Apple computers in a Dual G4 setup. The people that I work with now that are digitizing footage for me to use in after effects are running a Dual G4 setup and running AVID.

For a PC setup its critical that you have LOTS of ram and a very fast HD. The ram is very important for any real time renerdings that you want to do whether you using Premiere, After Effects, Final Cut, Combustion, etc etc.

The HD is especially important because you want fast speeds when you output to tape or transferring files because you don't want dropped or lost frames. File transfer at high speeds is also a godsend.

Another worthwhile thing is a firewire setup. Since many places have firewire compatible devices easy to transfer files between and super fast speed.

Not sure if you realized this but I thought i'd shoot it out there anyways.

As for a video card hmmmm. I'd say first don't get your typical gaming card if this is going to be a solid work machine. They just don't compare to professional cards. Don't let anyone tell you that a GF4 is just as good as a Quadro 4, read reviews on them. As for a specific card its hard to say I'd do searching on the net or maybe contact someone in the industry to see what they think is good.
The computer I'm working on currently that I do video and web work on has a 15,000 RPM SCSI drive and Quadro 4 750GXL vid card if that means anything to you. When I was in school we used Wildcat cards for a lot of the high end work and used Matrox Digisuite setup for outputting and premiere work. Anything beyond this level for software such as Effect, Flint, Inferno requires more high end machines.

Hopes this helps a bit.

thanks Bad, you have been very helpful. xxx

At school we use 800 MHz G4 Imacs with 17" widescreens and DVD burners with Final Cut Pro 3 for all our video editing needs in leadership technology :p.

They all have Geforce 4 MXs.