Laptop Editing

Hi

Setting up my little i5 PC laptop for field editing and are happy to report that using an external USB 3 drive works a treat with raw HDV footage.

It can nearly cut up raw Canon 7D MOV files too, lags a few frames.... but can be still scrubbed on the timeline and good enough for basic edits which can be mix in with the HDV material.

If I convert the movs to another codec it flies.

Tried it also with a normal USB 2 drive and of course un usable.

Which PC are you using Wags and which software to do the basic edits? I'm considering picking up a new machine as my old Pentium just won't keep up.

Cheers,

Steve

Steve,

check this one: http://www.slashgear.com/lenovo-thinkpad-w...outed-22134837/

Depending on your budged, you should get it with:

fastest processor, min. 8 GB of memory, video accelerated graphics, non glare screen, color correction (for photograpy), SSD Disk

Lenovo uses eSATA ports and they are much faster (especially a SSD-Disk) than USB 3, but it's not simple to find a external disk for a eSATA port.

I use a Lenovo W510 with 8 GB of memory and my buddy (a professional camera man) was impressed of his speed confronting it with his mac laptop.

I like lenovo/IBM because of there keyboard and i never had any issues with them considerating that they travel with me around the world, in planes,

in cars on bumpy roads, trains, wet, hot or dry, dusty ambients.

Chris

I just got the little http://www.asus.com.au/Notebooks/Multimedi...tainment/N61Jv/

Cheap as but does the job.

Its got an e sata port as well and may look at an external e sata

Came with no 1394 port but I just got a express card with one on it for firewire.

Win 7 64 bit. I think you know what software I use to EDIT with.

Of course with any PC one needs to tweak them to run the best.

Turn all the fancy graphics and uninstall all the rubbish they put on them.

Then make a partition and use Win 7 to make an image of your c:drive along with a boot up CDROM in case it all fails one day out in the field.

Boot from the CDROM and pull you prefect image back over the c: drive and you have a perfect running machine again.

And of course always follow the golden rule of never saving anything to your C: operating drive including emails.

Steve,

I'd hold off until late June. Nvidia is bringing out several more graphics cards that will work with the new CS5.5 as well as FC and depending upon whether you decide to switch away from the dark side and come to Macs, I may be able to help you on a graphics card purchase and save you a few hundred.

Steve

Yes leave the dark side and go to the world of transcoding and waiting :-)

Cannot believe how long it takes to make a DVD using iMovie HD and iDVD lol

Today I completely stuffed up my Laptop messing around with programs and stuff.... instead of trying to fix it all up I just put in the boot CDROM, directed it to my win 7 image... came back a short time later and my Laptop is up and running perfect all again.....Too Easy...If you are traveling then its a great way to instantly fix any problems you may encounter on the road even it the whole OS goes down.

Couldn't wait Steve, and yes I stayed in the light.

I had some fun this week specing out a new laptop to haul around on dive trips. I wanted a machine that I could play video back without dropping frames and would handle the downloads. I ended up with a Dell XPS 15. It's amazing what $1300 will get you these days;

Intel I7-2720QM quad core processor

8GB memory

Nvidia GT 540 2GB graphics card

750GB 7200 RPM SATA hard drive

Blu-ray DVD Combo

1920 x 1080 screen

USB 3.0 x 2

Backlit keyboard

We'll see how well it handles CS5 and PP,

Cheers,

Steve

Ha ha. well that should do the trick.

And in 2 more years you can spend another $1300 and buy even a faster better one.

Partition that hard drive then once its all setup how you want and running perfect, do the image of the C: drive thing and place it on the other partition.

Then make a boot up CDROM all with Win 7.

Then its really easy to restore the image anytime - anywhere to have a perfect computer again even if Windows does not boot.

Make sure you never save any files to your c:drive though.

I hear a Win7 Image will not knock your Adobe license out either so if that ever raises it ugly head just to a image restore instead of trying to fix Adobes finicky license.

You can use a USB 3 drive as a scratch disk too.

Have fun.

Ha ha. well that should do the trick.

The last one lasted almost five years. I'm into commitment.

I understand almost everything you recommended, but I'm a little clueless about your comment to never save files to the C: drive. I have always downloaded files to the laptop drive and backed up to a portable when out on the boats or resorts. Bad idea?

Thanks for the help!

Steve

I guess that he wanted to say that:

1° use Partition/Drive C: only for Programs and the operating system

2° use Partition/Drive D: for all data files

3° you may make 3 partitions of 250GB and use them as follows:

C: operating system & programs

D: Photos

E: other files (videos)

This makes a backup of all you photos more handy as you can copy/backup the whole drive D: as there will be only the photos,

the C: drive to backup the OS and drive E: for backup the other files.

Once the new files are on the right drive on your laptop you should do instantly a backup to a external disk,

disks kan break down suddenly as i experienced 2 months ago the hard way.

Fortunately i had made 2 week before a backup so the loss was "reasonable" small...

Chris

Yes Chris thats it, although its better to have your video files on another drive and not your operating drive as you will get much better performance.

Steve use an external USB 3 drive and dump your video files to that and edit from it.

You can also download the FREE SYNCTOY software and simply sync you two Image directories between two drives.

Thats way I like good old tape cameras, drives are too sensitive and can go down at any time. With a tape camera you have always got a backup archive tape.

Basically the C Drive-partition is only for your operating system and any software you install, no data-work files or even emails should be saved to it in case it has a tech hic, You can easily then bring your image back and it will wipe everything on C:. You put your boot up CD in, set it going and have a cup of coffee and relax, come back some time later and there is your computer running perfect again :-)

There is also many tweaks you can do to Win 7 to make it run much better for video editing. Thats one reason why I like PC's, you can really get in there and make it run how you want.

For example turn of stupid drive indexing and system restore.

Better yet Steve, since you are into commitment, buy a MacBook Pro. They hold up and last forever. Let me know and I will get you a discount.

Steve

The last one lasted almost five years. I'm into commitment.

 

I understand almost everything you recommended, but I'm a little clueless about your comment to never save files to the C: drive. I have always downloaded files to the laptop drive and backed up to a portable when out on the boats or resorts. Bad idea?

 

Thanks for the help!

Steve

You can easily just throw out the DVD ROM and put in a 2nd HDD, preferably a SSD which will zoom through everything. The new Vertex 3 hits 500MB/s and works very well. You just have to make sure your SATA port is 6gbps. Otherwise just go with the Vertex 2.

Thanks for the heads up on the Vertex Drew. A quick search shows they are getting to the point where they are almost affordable. The SSDs offered on the Dell site were just out of reach for me. Future upgrade list is started.

Cheers,

Steve

So lets see now, more on my little $1300 i5 laptop.

4 day dive trip cut up into a 50 minute video.

Passengers given their DVDs as they walked off the boat.

Edited the raw HDV mts footage mixed in with raw Cannon 60D movs on the same timeline in real tine (Canon needed some rendering).

Colour correction, speed and titles required no render except with the Canon files.

On the last morning I rendered out from the 50 minute timeline both a PAL 720 / 576 and 720 /480 NTSC MPEG 2 DVD files with ac3 audio.

That took a total of 60 minutes :-)

The MPEG 2 files were dropped into a PAL DVD authoring program where I made even chapters for each dive then compiled the DVD ready for burning.

That took 10 minutes in total.

I then did the same for the NTSC version which took another 10 minutes.

Then I just burnt the disks.

Then a customer wanted a ipod version so I rendered out one for her in under 30 minutes.

On the QUAD MAC using iMovie HD it takes over 3 hours to achieve the same thing before I can start even burning DVD,s and that is only for PAL.

Even more time if I need to make NTSC versions.

Plus all colour, speed and titles have to be rendered and all footage has to be transcoded before it can be edited not to mention it cannot even work with Canon files.

Its a no brainer.....:-)

I so wish i had any idea of what you guys are talking about.....

For all the gurus here, would you consider this laptop suitable for video editing?

Cheers Pete

http://cgi.ebay.com.au/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi...e=STRK:MEWAX:IT

Today I completely stuffed up my Laptop messing around with programs and stuff....

I remember back in the day when I used to have to mess around with my computers to get them to work properly. That was before the enlightenment

For all the gurus here, would you consider this laptop suitable for video editing?

Cheers Pete

http://cgi.ebay.com.au/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi...e=STRK:MEWAX:IT

The nice fellas over in Macintosh sell proper ones.

What NLE are you going to be using?

Generally, the machine looks OK. You'll benefit from a faster HD, try ramp it up to 7200rpm, max out the memory. The GPU isn't Mercury compatible if you are intending on using Premiere Pro CS5.5 though. But it's 64bit (make sure you use an NLE that is 64bit for the best performance.), i7 with a fast drive it should be steaming.

The nice fellas over in Macintosh sell proper ones.

 

 

What NLE are you going to be using?

 

Generally, the machine looks OK. You'll benefit from a faster HD, try ramp it up to 7200rpm, max out the memory. The GPU isn't Mercury compatible if you are intending on using Premiere Pro CS5.5 though. But it's 64bit (make sure you use an NLE that is 64bit for the best performance.), i7 with a fast drive it should be steaming.

It does come with a 7200rpm 500gb HDD. Is the GPU the graphics card? What the hell is NLE? I am still learning if you havn't noticed....

Is 8gb of ram enough or do i really need 12gb?

Would the processor be ok or should i look at one of the upgrades or should i just look at another laptop altogether?

Cheers Pete.

What is everyones dream laptop, i know we are all bound by budgets so if you had say $2500 what laptop would you want for video editing?