How to Upgrade or Buy a Computer to Use Digital Video

As personal computers are getting more powerful, it's getting easier for "normal people" to edit video at home. However, as video files are extremely large, it takes a lot of hard disk space and RAM to work on them efficiently. You will also need a video capture card to transfer analog video from your camcorder or VCR to your computer.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• 16-bit Sound Cards
• 3-D Video Cards
• Jaz Drives
• Video Capture Cards
• fast, high-capacity hard disks
• >128 MB RAM

1. Get at least 64 MB of RAM; get a minimum of 128 MB of RAM to prevent performance problems (more is better).

2. Get a fast, high-capacity hard disk. Buy an Ultra ATA/66 hard drive that spins at 7200 RPM or faster, with an average seek time of fewer than 9 milliseconds (ms). Look for one that holds at least 16.8 GB (gigabytes) of data.

3. To get video from your camcorder or VCR to the computer, add a PCI video capture card, an external video capture device, or, if you have Windows 98 and a digital camcorder, a FireWire card.

4. If you have a Sony digital camcorder, make sure a new computer has a FireWire (IEE1394) port or a Sony I-link port.

5. Make sure a new computer has at least a 350 MHz processor. If you know the software you will use can take advantage of a Pentium III's multimedia capabilities, be sure to get a Pentium III.

6. Get a 16-bit sound card with a high signal-to-noise ratio.

7. Make sure a new computer has a video card and sound card as opposed to having those capabilities built into the motherboard.

8. Buy a high-capacity backup device, such as a Jaz drive or a CD-RW drive.

Tips & Warnings

• Consider a SCSI hard disk and SCSI controller card for faster speed. A SCSI hard drive is essential for working with video on a Macintosh.
• RAM is temporary memory; hard disk space is storage. Your software and the files you're working on get loaded in RAM when you use the software. If you don't have much RAM, it can take the computer a long time to do any work on large video files. Then you'll need the hard disk space to store the video files after you're done working on them.