What type of processor is needed to edit HD videos?

Any PC can do it, its just slow if its a older PC. If its to slow it can however result i failures when exporting


Get a PC with a Xeon cpu and scsi drives, that will ensure a smooth result.
I reccomend ThinkStation D10
Use 4gigs + of ram and get a PRO to set it up correctly
http://shop.lenovo.com/SEUILibrary/c...51CEFB6F075529

When you are ready to step up from that, you buy a dedicated boardset, the PC will support it

I have a Dell duo core with 2 gigs of ram and do HD videos with Sony vegas and can still run photoshop and a browser with no real slowdown.

Duo core or higher.

Screw processor, buy ram

the video card is as important as the processor and ram in a HD video editing machine. Contrary to what is posted above, 'any old computer' can't process HD video - even some new ones with shitty video cards have trouble even opening a video file let alone batch converting it or actually doing anything with it.

If you aren't really technically confident to custom build a machine or ask for specific hardware, look for a computer that is built for gaming - they have top video cards and good processor speed with a good amount of ram.

On the contrary, the video card is meaningless for editing HD video. None of my dual core or Core 2 Duo pcs have anything more than an inexpensive video card and I edit, render and encode high definition video with real time effects with Adobe Premiere Pro all day long.

Screw computers..

Nothing beats a cisor and some duck tape !

HD as in uncompressed HD, or mildly compressed as in D-5 HD or HDCAM Sr? Or formats like DVCPro HD? Or (most likely) HDV and AVCHD?

There's a big difference, because HDV and AVCHD are so heavily compressed that they actually require a LOT of processing power.

Assuming you're doing HDV or AVCHD and want smooth playback during editing even when you use effects I recommend the recently released Intel Core i7 chips (the 920 or 940 are good, if you have the cash the 965 is unbelievable).

Below that I'd say go with an Intel Core 2 Duo E7300, E8600, Q9400, Q9550, or Q9650
If you're okay with the occasional stuttering, the Q6600 is a great and very affordable Quad Core processor from Intel. Encoding is fast with it but actual editing not so much if you do HDV or AVCHD.

Contrary to popular opinion, for HDV editing clock speed IS still important so I'm afraid a Dual Core 1.8 Ghz won't do.
An old Pentium D or even Pentium 4 with very high cock speed (3.2 Ghz, 3.4Ghz) could suffice but those are certainly not nearly as nice as the ones listed above.
Core i7 and Core 2 Duo/Quadcore are your ticket.

If you get any of the Core i7 chips (recommended) you'll need to buy a special motherboard for the new LGA 1366 socket, old boards will not work with these.

get a dual or quad core, get a large amount of ram, and get a professional vid editing video card.. not a gaming one.

i can import and edit hdv on my crappy $600 lappy, dual intel centrino 1.66mhz, 512mb ram, shared vid ram.
i don't recomend this! unless you're very patience.

dats simple...... a quadcore and 4 gb of Ram should do the trick... but if u wanna rock the house add an additional 8 GB of RAM for a sexy total of 16 GB ..

i can recommend new xps version of dell thats a good computer that fitted to your editing job!!!!!!!

With the exception of Jim G, you're all wrong. There isn't one thing you need over the other. You need to find a balance between all components. CPU, Graphics, RAm and HD all play a part.

My suggestion for HD... fuck quads, get an 8 core system. I did. I'll never go back to the quads again.

we dont have 8 cores in south america


our editing computer has a quad core, 4 gigs and a geforce 8500


and works pretty damn good