Would it be possible/practical to build a mini-PC “render box” (video rendering, not model/animation rendering), for Camtasia/Vegas?
Neither of them seems to use that much memory. So a lean Windows 7 install seems like it would be good, as long as I throw it a high-end CPU. But it seems like you’d need GPU power to bring down the render time. Or is there other, dedicated hardware that would be better?
I’ve been contemplating building a decently powered server box to sequester in my closet. Something I can host virtual machines on to play with remotely (e.g. an always-on vpn vm), host any wired devices like SAN storage, printer, etc. But I don’t want to spend mega bucks.
kfsone's pittance 
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i’m not sure about GP-GPU assist for rendering video (someone is probably doing it). raw core(s) power works though. a nice quad core setup should reduce render time. high def in the 1080p range still takes awhile though.
Don’t remember if it was Vegas or Camtasia, but one of them has a check box to “Do rendering on CPU even if GPU is available”.
that just means it isn’t that stable yet :D.
well, you could build a shuttle barebones pc with an older core2 quad and either a nvidia 96xx or 98xx card or go the ati route with say a 4850 and do it relatively inexpensively.
that way you cover all the bases of CPU or GPU computing.
Sounds like a good setup; don’t care that much about speed because it won’t tie up my main system :)
yeah, you could go more on the cheap with lower end GPUs even. those GP-GPU capable cards get down in the 50 dollar range and would likely work just fine. check the docs for those programs of course. they may be using CUDA vs openCL which limits you to an nvidia solution.