I have been searching around the forum and using google to find more information on this topic but i cannot find any so i decided to create a topic and ask.
Currently I have a unstable PC 5 year old PC that needs to be upgraded. The current hardware:

GPU: Nvidia Quadro FX 580
CPU: Intel i7 950 3.07ghz
Memory: 3x 2GB OCZ

I want to replace this computer with a new one but before i buy anything id like to know what would be optimal for kdenlive.

I haven't been able to find what kind of hardware kdenlive supports best or is the fastest and the 'recommended hardware' page seems outdated. Could anybody point me in the right direction? Do i spend all money on a good CPU and get a GPU thats just good enough for full HD video? Or does kdenlive do all GPU rendering? Which CPUs and GPUs are best for me. Etc.

Sincerely hope anybody can help me with this, thanks in advance.
Steven.

Hello,

Regarding GPU, try to avoid NVidia. We're having many crash reports with these cards... and I've bought a recent one and even linux fails to boot with it! I don't know about ATI/AMD, usually Intel is a safe bet for GPU. I've also heard that Movit (GPU effects) eat a lot of video ram, but I wouldn't make it a 1st choice criterion.
Faster CPU clock is better than more cores, as rendering+encoding multithreading doesn't seems to bring much beyond 4 cores.
And lots of RAM makes you safe for projects with many many different clips (several hundreds) ; MLT has to keep data available for all of them (+sometimes kdenlive or MLT dev versions have memory leaks...).
A small SSD is convenient to store the system, but data on a big spinning disk is not penalizing performance.

Good luck!

Vincent

ah that s interesting..

in the lightworks forum they recommend the more expensive nvida cards like from

GTX970 4GB DDR5 Nvidia and above for video editing...

especially the nvidia quadro M are recommended

and i m looking into a new card also for a while to speed up my system (and maybe to get more correct colors with some calibrated screen) but like always linux and graphic cards have a weird relation... I keep having issues with proprietary drivers, dual screen, etc.. and it doesnt seem to improve

anyone can recommend a "pro" card that is running well with proprietary drivers (u need for having lightworks working) and kdenlive?

I'm running a Gigabyte GA-Z97X-SLI motherboard (integrated Intel GPU), with an Intel i7-4790K CPU, 16GB of RAM and an Intel SSD for the system - data is held on a spinning rust disk.

As has been mentioned above, the Intel GPUs are superb for video. They tend to get overlooked in the NVidia/AMD wars because they are not so hot for 3D gaming, but for handling video, they are unbeatable. And the drivers are included in the Linux kernel - no need for proprietary drivers!

Its a shame they are not available on separate boards any longer.

My PC is a couple of years old now, but handles everything video that I've thrown at it. I'm running Slackware 64 14.2 on it, and Kdenlive runs smoothly and quickly. Transcoding using ffmpeg is also very quick.

For video work, plenty of RAM is a very good idea. An SSD for the operating system improves boot times and general liveliness spectacularly. But for video work, in my experience, the Intel GPU beats anything from NVidia or AMD hands down. The lack of issues with drivers, due to them being incorporated in the standard kernel is also a blessing!

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Pete

@ pete are there used pci cards you would recommend for video editing?

I don't think Intel have made discrete graphics cards for some while. Indeed, I believe that the graphics gpu is nowadays integrated into the Core-Ix processors - probably why its so fast with video.

In the past, I've used both NVidia and Ati/AMD cards, but have become unimpressed with the Linux support for both. And both seem to make expensive cards obsolete far too quickly for my liking!

I think that if you want Intel graphics, you need a motherboard using the Intel chipset and a Core-Ix processor. But I stand to be corrected, if anyone knows better?

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Pete

anyone has tried the blackmagic DeckLink Mini Monitor card? I was wondering how the blackmagic equipment would work or not on linux, like they seem to have a pretty open source friendly policy ...