Computer Hardware for Jitter Inquiry
Hello.
First off, let me apologize in advance if this is a well beaten subject -- I did a brief search but wasn't able to find anything specific to my concern.
With that said, I've recently purchased a new computer for audio work and have long been a member of several audio based programming communities (SuperCollider, Reaktor, etc). However, the bug to switch into doing video instillation work has been gnawing at me and I wanted to know whether .. well, let me just ask it -->
My question: The new computer I recently purchased certainly has the punch to run Jitter (Intel i5 core, Windows 7 laptop). What I'm worried about, however, is the graphics card as I opted to ignore any and all options offered to me on that front. More informatively, I selected an integrated intel card that gave me little information beyond that (i.e. no dedicated third party card will be in this system). Was this a mistake?
The card I selected (according to the spec sheet I can access) is ignominiously labeled: "Intel(R) HD Graphics [HDMI, VGA] - For Dual Core Processors" which tells me next to nothing.
For $50 more, however, I could have picked up a "512MB ATI Mobility Radeon(TM) HD 5470 switchable graphics [HDMI, VGA] - For Dual Core Processors" so I can presume my integrated graphics chip will be worse than this.
Should I send it back and get a better machine to do video work? Like I said, I'm completely green when it comes to this universe.
p.s. Just to be a bit more verbose about my needs, I would like to use Jitter to track, analyze and/or manipulate video (both live and recorded) in an environment integrated with audio. No rendering or 3d generation of graphics will be on my agenda but I may want to explore generative capabilities in tandem with live input signals.
Thanks again!
P.P.S. Oh, and for completeness' sake, my system is being purchased new and from the manufacturer (HP dv6tse laptop with 8 gbs of ram). I checked the system requirements for Jitter and am away that my system patches them.. but I presume those are minimum specs and not recommended or otherwise a commentary on optimal performance (for my needs, especially). Hence the post. :)
Oh, and yes, I do plan on merely testing out a demo of Jitter on the system once it arrives but that will be nearly a month from now as the purchase was very recent (and online).
if you plan on making any use of opengl, you should not be using integrated intel gpus.
otherwise, it will probably not be much of a concern.
Thank you for the reply.
So video work would primarily use the ram installed in my machine and wouldn't need anything based on a video card, got it.
In a related note, does anybody know where I can find a link to a video or project done in Opengl so I can weigh the relative benefits of that option. As of now I'm not particularly interested in 2d/3d generative abilities but this may change with time.
For $50 I'd say definitely get the Radeon Mobility. You may want to expand into OpenGL later and this is a small price to pay for that capability. Most optimizations of your video projects will equire you to use the OpenGL objects in Jitter eventually, although it's probably good not to start there due to the learning curve.
openGL will let you do everything you already do with video, but get out of the box (flat canvas)... so yes, I vote upgrade!
once you see how videos look wrapped around models and shapes (with the easy option to default to flat canvas) you'll never want to go back.