Is this PC good enough for editing HD footage?

I have recently bought a Canon VIXIA HV40 camcorder which films in HD. I plan on editing with HD(720p-1080p) using Adobe After Effects and Premiere Pro. Both are CS4

I have a PC with the following specs:
32-bit Windows XP Service Pack 2
Intel Core 2 Quad CPU Q6700 @ 2.666 GHz
3 GB of RAM
NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GT

I also read that the 32 bit WInXP can hold 3.5 RAM but my computer only recognizes 3. Is there anyway I can turn it into 3.5?

I'm not using AE to do 3D stuff yet as I am not that experienced with this program. Maybe do some do some zombie effects like on Kramer's tutorial, and some color grading. Nothing that complicated

I don't mind experiencing some lag, so don't tell me to upgrade just because it takes 2-3 seconds to respond

Is this enough to edit HD? What do i need to upgrade?

Thank You,

Comments

3 Responses to “Is this PC good enough for editing HD footage?”
  1. Steve says:
    June 29, 2010 at 8:16 am

    -XP will only recognize 3… that’s normal, under peak conditions, it might use more (3.25 or so). Also, don’t forget, some memory space is attributed to your graphic card.

    -AE doesn’t do 3D, it uses interpolation and scaling to fake 3D space, hence why most call it 2.5D.

    -You will experience lag, I can guarantee it. The video card will give you no benefit in AE or Premiere so I’m not even worrying about that yet*. 3GB of memory for encoded HD footage is really tight, especially when you’ll start adding on layers and effects. The processor is fine though.

    My suggestions:
    -Upgrade you ram if possible (if your motherboard supports a maximum of 4GB, get that last GB in there and install XP64 or Vista64).
    -Make sure you disable as many background processes as possible. Running a very clean Windows installation is key (http://www.tweakhound.com/xp/xptweaks/supertweaks1.htm will give you very good tips on how you can make your system lean and mean)
    -If you can, when rendering, save your video files to another hard drive (not another partition, I mean another physical drive). This will decrease the HD bottleneck.
    -If you cannot upgrade your system for what ever reason, use prerenders/proxies. Meaning you render out your clip in SD format, low quality, low bit rate, uncompressed. You edit these clips, you add effects to these clips, and in the end, you swap the proxies for the native file. (http://livedocs.adobe.com/en_US/AfterEffects/8.0/help.html?content=WSB356ACD2-AF59-4604-B378-31D687DB5ACC.html)

    Hope it helps.

    *The video card won’t give you any performance boost because, firstly, you’re not using any "3D" effects (which is where graphic cards will boost performance), secondly because your card isn’t anything special. No offense.

  2. Jeff says:
    June 29, 2010 at 8:16 am

    That looks fair enough.

    And 32 bit OSes never detect more than 3GB RAM.

  3. DON says:
    June 29, 2010 at 8:16 am

    Assuming that you have enough hard drive space, your existing hardware should be more than sufficient for your purposes.

    Don

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