Adobe Premiere on Laptop

[Kim]

My two cents.

Forget about everything in the laptop except for the processor and ram. The faster, and the more the better. Assuming your laptop has firewire get two firewire drives with the fastest rpm you can find/afford. Use one for capture and the other one for encoding/editing. The only thing you want on your laptop internal harddrive is the actual program. Don't put any video data on it.

 

[drbill]

The graphics card won't make a bit of difference in video editing.

Have to disagree here. I don't see any impact on my desktops because my graphics cards on those systems use dedicated rather than shared system RAM. With many of the laptops coming out from Dell, the basic (and sometimes only option) graphics subsystem utilizes shared memory. Therefore there are added burdens placed on the RAM due to calls from the OS and software and calls from the video subsystem.

I've read a number of reviews and talked to some "experts" on this and they all seem to agree that a laptop with dedicated RAM is much preferred. I'd like to think they are wrong but can't afford to risk it.

 

[Jeff Toorish]

Are you actually editing on the laptop, or just capturing?

I have had great luck with SONY VAIOs, done just about everything possible, including video editing. Check on the most recent versions.

One thing to avoid is getting the Windows XP Media Edition. It sounds like it is designed to create media. In fact, it is designed to play media, like DVDs or TV on a computer. It reserves a portion of the processor power for that and actually slows down everything else.

Most RAM, fastest processor, that's the key.

A final point, one real problem with laptops is the angle of the screen, take care that the screen is at the best angle for brightest viewing and try to keep it color corrected.

Jeff

 

[larsdennert]

I disagree too. Hard drive speed is more important that RAM. At 13gig per hour you'll never have enough RAM. For capturing, any laptop that sports a firewire will be fast enough to capture and probably edit standard def.

The newer laptops with 1.8 ghz processors (esp the DUO units) can even play back HD material at full speed and size. Their more sophisticated graphic chips make up for the lack of processor speed.

I edit HDV on 3ghz dual core pentium with dual SATA drives and two graphics cards using XP media center. The only difference I can see with media center is that it comes with an extra app you can use with the "TV" remote to access media. You don't have to run it. I see no extra system processes that chew up CPU power running on it.

Media Center is basically XP Home with a couple of features found in XPPro. It is between the two. In fact you can disable any number of services that you don't need. XPPro is a bigger memory hog but all are scalable to memory and processor.

 

[jonnythan]

Have to disagree here. I don't see any impact on my desktops because my graphics cards on those systems use dedicated rather than shared system RAM. With many of the laptops coming out from Dell, the basic (and sometimes only option) graphics subsystem utilizes shared memory. Therefore there are added burdens placed on the RAM due to calls from the OS and software and calls from the video subsystem.

I've read a number of reviews and talked to some "experts" on this and they all seem to agree that a laptop with dedicated RAM is much preferred. I'd like to think they are wrong but can't afford to risk it.

64MB of "Shared" video RAM won't make a lick of difference when your system has 1GB+ of installed RAM.

RAM, hard drive, and CPU are basically all that matter. A negligible amount of memory and memory bandwidth will be used by the video subsystem. I do speak from experience

edit: Oh yeah, a Core Duo laptop with a boatload of RAM would be a beast at video.

 

[SmileMon]

What's wrong with the serious line of laptops? (or Gamers laptops as they are known)

A few names come to mind - Alienware, Pro Star, Sager.

You can find them in almost desktop configurations, but beware of using them as 'lap tops' - your private parts might get cooked...
Basically getting them in P4, 2GB memory is possible, even AMD dual core is possible, the CPU/memory options are limited only by your budget, you can even get them in RAID0/1 configurations so you can squeeze a few more bits per seconds of disk performance/reliability, the CPU usually keep cool by their massive fans but the GPU might get steaming hot and then the GPU fan kicks in and the laptops sounds like its ready for takeoff!

There is however a big problem with these laptops, I've read that a few of them has reliablility issues, fall apart, bad service... etc', do your own research.

 

[drbill]

64MB of "Shared" video RAM won't make a lick of difference when your system has 1GB+ of installed RAM.

Believe me, I really want you to be right on this (and think it is possible), but even the Dell sales droids, who were generally less than helpful, say the shared memory GPU's are not suited to video editing. I'd want to try one before I bought to see.

 

[jonnythan]

The Dell sales guys have *no idea* what they're talking about.

When you know a lot about computer architecture and performance, you don't go to work as a Dell consumer salesman. They're told what they should say, and obviously notebook computers with higher-end non-built-in graphics solutions are going to be significantly higher priced and more profitable for Dell.

 

[SmileMon]

Johnny I wonder how you know that, shared memory means its using the internal memory which is slower than the GPU memory usually, at least on the high performance ATI/NVIDIA.

http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=2526

Video performance is not affected by the shared memory - unless there is NO DEDICATED MEMORY what so ever, since Video performance is OVERLAY - direct access to the card's internal memory.

All in all, Video editing performance is govenred by the system's memory and cpu - getting a dual cpu (provided that the video editing software supports it), a faster memory with dual pipelines (which basically means that if you have 2 memory modules with the same speed and size) will be doubled.
For example - 2 sticks of 1GB 400GHz will have the performance of 800Mhz - in one condition - that the bus is 800Mhz too.
There is one exception to this - AMD processors - the new processors have separate interface/controllers for memory and system bus, which makes them utilize the memory performance rather then being limited by the system bus.

If you're really looking for performance, look for P4 overclocking using water or multi peltier modules, with proper overclocking you can get 50% more, but the cooling systems for those things cost more than the whole computer.

There was an article a few years ago about people who took cooling to the max and used liquid nitrogen to cool a cpu to about -150 degrees, they overclocked the system to 10GHz........

http://forums.overclockers.co.nz/showthread.php?s=&threadid=7032

Ofcurse we're talking crazy now, for simple video editing a simple high performance computer (either AMD or Intel) will do the trick.

 

[drbill]

The Dell sales guys have *no idea* what they're talking about.

When you know a lot about computer architecture and performance, you don't go to work as a Dell consumer salesman. They're told what they should say, and obviously notebook computers with higher-end non-built-in graphics solutions are going to be significantly higher priced and more profitable for Dell.

Have to agree with you on the first. I actually sent Michael Dell a letter with the transcript of my sales droid chat since his responses were so irrelevant to my questions.

Don't question the second part either, but some of the trade mags are saying the same thing about the shared memory GPU's in the Dell systems re: video editing. If I had one in my hands and could see the performance myself, then I'd know if I was happy with it.