Upgrade to Media Server

[SolihullRog]

Hi (My first post),

I'm looking for advice on upgrading my media server.

I have two almost-identical PC's - one of which is my media server and the other is for other things.

I have 4TB of media. I stream movies to my TV, and also have a new TV which is acting as a picture frame - fed with pictures and/or movies from the media server. Communication to both TVs is via wifi. I take home movies and do some editing. My server only has 4GB of RAM and struggles, so I want to upgrade it. This will require a new motherboard. I want my solution to be strong and have a lifetime of at least 5 years, but I don't want to throw my money away..

Questions are:

1. Would 8GB of memory suffice or would I get extra benefit out of 16?
2. A salesman is trying to sell me an i7 processor but I think that's because I told him how much money I had. I get the impression that an I5 would suffice, and may even be more than I need. What do you think?
3. I don't know anything about motherboards. Are there some well-known 'do's' and don'ts'?
4. Someone has recommended that I spend money on an SSD, but I can't imagine a lot of benefit of one on a media server. Views?
5. There are hundreds of solutions for a TV-based picture frame slideshows, but almost all are unable to display each picture for 30 minutes without some downside. Most of them move after after no more than 15 seconds. Does anybody know a good solution?

What do you think?

 

[CropEditPaste]

An i5 is sufficient for any media work, but an i7 will always be better. If you gave some hardware specs then we could work with that, but to start, 4gb of RAM is really low. 8-10gb is fine, but 12-16gb would be the best. An SSD should speed up editing, but I am not one who knows much on that. Motherboards are really weird to explain, but if it works with your stuff, then I'd say it works.

If you can get back with the current processor and the motherboard, we can work from there.

 

[SolihullRog]

Hi,

Thanks for the rapid answer.

I don't know exactly which specs you want, but this is a summary:

Summary
Operating System
Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit SP1
CPU
Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 @ 3.00GHz 71 °C
Wolfdale 45nm Technology
RAM
4.00GB Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 533MHz (7-7-7-20)
Motherboard
Gigabyte Technology Co. Ltd. EG41MFT-US2H (Socket 775) 51 °C
Graphics
HP 23cw (1920x1080@60Hz)
Intel G41 Express Chipset (Gigabyte)
Intel G41 Express Chipset (Gigabyte)
Storage
931GB SAMSUNG HD103SJ ATA Device (SATA) 49 °C
2794GB Western Digital WDC WD30EFRX-68EUZN0 ATA Device (SATA) 48 °C
931GB Seagate FreeAgent USB Device (USB (SATA)) 35 °C
Optical Drives
TSSTcorp CDDVDW SH-S223L ATA Device
Audio
High Definition Audio Device


I've had difficulty finding memory that the motherboard could take. It's only got two slots. So I've decided that I need the new motherboard.

I often have other processes going, and I was just stuttering along until I started doing a lot of movie editing and trying lots of solutions to find a reliable way of displaying the picture frame. Since then, it's just stuttered to a halt. The salesman was also suggesting that I bought 32GB of memory.

Nowadays I can't rely on anything because the memory seems to be full, and corrupting processes..

 

[jsmithepa]

I often have other processes going, and I was just stuttering along until I started doing a lot of movie editing and trying lots of solutions to find a reliable way of displaying the picture frame

OK, I got thrown off by MEDIA SERVER, which to me, is a dedicated box, whose sole job is to make available MEDIA to the rest of the network, like a NAS.

But after your latest post, obviously this is something else. Editing Movie you say, well heck, then as much horsepower as you are able to afford.

 

[SolihullRog]

I'm mightily impressed by the responses on this forum!

But, to be clear, It's only me and my wife. After trips away, I clean up the movies that I've taken (on the server) , and then store them on the server. This is not at a time when anybody else is playing any movies or anything. I also sort out my photographs, and ensure that my backups are in place. And do other bits.

So at any given time the machine is putting pictures to the picture frame

PLUS EITHER playing a movie

OR editing stuff and other bits.

Editing / rendering movies seems to be the big load.

Do you still think I need more than an I5 and 16GB? And maybe an SSD?


Thanks in advance.

 

[jsmithepa]

OK, now you further refine you requirement, I now read "occasionally" do these heavy things.

Definitely, that Duo-core needs to retire. i5 would be fine to do these occasional heavy things.

amount of ram depends on the size of the video file you are editing, just a few files, or are we talking terabytes of videos? and how patience are you. A few files, once in a while, I wouldn't think it's a big deal to let the video to re-encode on its own for a couple of hours while I find other things to do. And what kind of video editing, just cut and paste? or are you re-mastering to remove noise and what not? do you go back&forth on the changes until you are happy? lots of interaction means you want fast response, nothing is more annoying than (you) moving 100 miles an hour while the car in front of you is moving 30. But if you just cut here, cut there, re-encode (on its own), a little slow won't kill you. One way to purchase these things is, if you are not sure, bang4rbuck, everybody knows that right. So if you can get 4gig for $30, and 8gig for $50, 8 gig is a better buy, but not if 8 gig costs you $70. Ram is relatively cheap these days, your call. I say minimum 8.

SSD is recommend for general "smoothness." You needn't buy a big SSD, 256 gig (best bang4rbuck 6 months ago) is more than sufficient. You just want the OS+Apps on the SSD, the big movie/picture on normal (more cost effective) HD. Do not forget backup. Have you heard of RansomWare? A virus that encodes your pictures/videos and until you pay up, you lost them. The technology is not there to catch 'em bad guys yet.

 

[SolihullRog]

I'm only talking about editing, say 20GB of movies at a time. Perhaps 4 times a year (But because of not addressing the issue I've got years of backlog). I may go on holiday and take 20 GB of footage, which requires cutting down when I return. I might cut it down to 5GB. This involves removing scenes of various lengths, cutting out wind noise, introducing titles etc. I do go back and forth until I'm happy. I can easily finish up with more than 50 clips.

The editing is painful but I can stand it, and I don't mind the rendering taking a few hours. But the PC is unusable whilst the rendering is being done. I'd like it to be useable for odd jobs whilst this is happening. The mouse is uncontrollable and some applications freeze or do strange things.

I have two backups of EVERYTHING, on different medias and different PC's - so I think I'm OK there...

 

[jsmithepa]

OK, sounds like you can benefit from an i7 and 16 gig ram, and budget sounds like not a major concern.

Machine freezes because the video task is demanding 100% of what the CPU can deliver, now this will happen even with a new box. The way you deal with this is, configure video applications so they run a BELOW NORMAL priority. This is a Windows thing and allows other tasks to have their turn with the CPU.

 

[SolihullRog]

Again, that's great. I think I understand it all. The only problem is "budget sounds like not a major concern". Actually, I've got the money, but I HATE spending it.....!

Thanks

(So it's I7, 16GB, SSD I suppose. Who cares about money?)