2018 Video Editing Hell | Editing HDR footage on a budget...
It's been about six weeks since I uploaded any video content, anywhere! I am losing my mind and all my subscribers probably think that something terrible happened to me. Well, things have happened, but they are not terrible. My YT channel was born out of my creative desire to share silly videos and have some fun. That was in 2008! I may be small time, but I have been a video content creator for ten years! Back in the day, I had no problem affording the hardware I needed to build up a decent video editing machine and obtaining decent software. Back here ten years later, I have not had such good luck.
I have produced a lot of content over the last year, more than all the other years combined and that was in part to my job. I was an IT guy for our local hospice - great place. I was responsible for training. I convinced the managers to give me a video editing machine and a subscription to Adobe Creative Cloud so I could have access to the latest video editing software. I was also spoiled with a 100 Mbps fiber internet connection to upload in just minutes. Two LG G5 smartphones to use for recording and pretty much everything I needed to create content. So I used it a lot on my own time... a LOT ... c'mon I had to practice to be proficient at my job right??? And suddenly my YT channel was gaining speed... people were subscribing on a regular basis. I realized I needed to step up my game, so I created the On the Homestead series about sustainable living and launched the first two episodes right away. But I got canned after it was discovered that I like to catch a hot one in the parking lot in the afternoons when it gets quiet in the office. I had the choice to stay and work without such pleasures, not to mention more restrictions and oversight, or I could resign. So I left and haven't looked back. I am just doing odd summer jobs as I am a jack of all trades and my skills so happen to be in demand....Then the shit canning came and I found myself without any of this technology!
In the midst of all this, I was blessed with a gift from a friend! It was a new camera the Sony HDR action camera, similar to a GoPro! I was stoked and totally not expecting this!!! So at least my camera problem was solved, so I have been filming with it, but this has created a new problem. The HDR footage is huge!! Out of the box, 30-minute video files are about 3.5 GB! Premier crashes as soon as it tries to import the footage on the laptop, so that's out. Now... just to build a video editing rig.
No problem - I got it! I'll just use my severance pay to build up a new rig - sweet!!! Well??? Severance wasn't as much as what folks make it out to be... I thought I would see like six months pay, having been there for six years, but I got three weeks. Yippie. I mean, oh shit... So that did not last very long, but I was still lacking a video editing machine and even video cameras. So I went back into my tech room and started digging through all the old junk set for recycling. There was a 15-year-old PC that was top of the line for its time. I still had a good 512 MB nVidia Quatro graphics card and SSD operating system with the fastest memory the motherboard would support. It is a complete turd by today's standards with only 8GB of DDR2 800 Mhz RAM, AMD Athalon X2 64 Dual Core, and 1000W PSU.
Installed Windows 10 on it... shit, no drivers for the Quatro... that's out. Installed Windows 7, works great, but now the machine bluescreens randomly and frequently, indicating memory and/or motherboard errors... that's out. Now, what was I to do? This thing wouldn't even stay on long enough to install Adobe Premier. Let's try the laptop; video editing is more CPU intensive anyway, so maybe the integrated graphics will be enough to make a youtube video. Installed just fine, but crashed no long after loading video footage into the project.
So maybe if I was still recording with my crappy old smartphone, I could still use that setup, but it was not going to fly for the HDR. I decided I'd have to drop some cash on a new machine, so onto craigslist! I found what looked like a killer deal not far away! For just $300 I found a complete PC, ready to go except for the video card. Now, I thought, this rig ought to be able to handle it. It features an AMD FX-8370 Quad Core with hyperthreading at 4.0Ghz, 32 GB DDR3 1866 Mhz RAM, and 2 TB hard drives with a nice case and the guy tossed in the old processor, speakers and sub, and a wireless keyboard and mouse - sweet! However, upon bringing it home, it did boot, but needed some upgrades. It had Windows 10 Home... HA - that shit wasn't going to fly... so I upgraded to Pro and put it on a separate SSD. Hmmm wait a minute... old processor? How old is this motherboard? Further investigation revealed that the board was at least 5 years old. This could be a problem.
The first upgrade was putting Windows Pro on an SSD. That was fine, but the next was to upgrade to a better GPU. However, after installing it, the board failed to post. None of my good cards were working and I later found out it is because the interface of this old motherboard is PCIe 2.0 and there are hardly any good cards on the market for such antiquated architecture. I tried to run Premier on the 1GB card that the machine came with, but it would crash as soon as I imported the new footage. I realized that this board was already upgraded to its absolute maximum potential except for the video card. I priced out a new unit once again and was shocked by the price of yet another build with the latest architecture - $800! No way! I gotta make this work on a budget. So I found an MSI GT 730 4GB card on Newegg for a little under a $100 and had it shipped my way. Hopefully this last upgrade will be what I need to handle and edit the footage. Otherwise, I'm going to have to turn my camera settings down or get a crappier camera.
