Ultralight notebook for editing.

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Gunpowderboy

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Is anyone using an ultralite notebook for editing Gopro videos? Thinking about getting an upgrade from my netbook, but have no idea what to get.

Any suggestions are welcome.
 
Editing higher resolution and higher fps video modes need some power, my 4 y'old top-of-the-line (it was at the time) Dell XPS notebook struggles to deal with 1080p.
 
If you want to watch a clip an ipad does fine up to a point, lite notebook is sufficient for pictures but unable to perform video compression
 
Thanks for the input. I'm looking at an i7 core with at least 1.7ghz so while it may not be the most fluid setup, it should theoretically work. Anyone have experience with such a setup?

The reason for the ultra book is I need something portable for editing on the go.
 
I have a MacBook Air 2.0 i7 and it does ok when your edits are a few minutes otherwise it takes a long time, but the main problem is the fan and the heat generated
Video editing is stuff for a workstation these days still
 
I have a MacBook Air 2.0 i7 and it does ok when your edits are a few minutes otherwise it takes a long time, but the main problem is the fan and the heat generated
Video editing is stuff for a workstation these days still

Damn. I am looking at upgrading my Toshiba Windows 7 laptop and wanted to go with a MacBook Air. Hmmm. In my life I can't deal with a workstation, and need portability.
 
As a MacBook Air and Pro Retina user, I can say that for 1080p30 footage from a GoPro camera; editing is just fine with FCP X on an 11" MacBook Air provided that you get the top end processor and memory combination.
For the 11" Air, that is currently the i7 2.0 (boost to 3.2)GHz processor with 8GB of DDR3L RAM.
Also, upgrade the storage. 256 SSD is minimum for editing substantial projects locally, if you move the project to external storage once done with it to make room for the next one.

And on a maxxed out Retina Pro, editing is *fantastic* :D
Even on a "base" model 13" Retina Pro, editing is still super fast. The display on the 13" and 15" Retina models is the best I've seen on any laptop EVER.
I'd spring for the SSD... Mainly for speed, but durability is greatly increased too!


Yes, I know, money, Apple tax, whatever.
I've made the mistake of trying alternatives several times and they do save me money until I realize they suck, which has been every time.

YMMV
 
+1 for MacBook Air. Great on planes, hotels and boats. I use for photo's mostly, not video. HOWEVER, I do the occasional video editing,and have no gripes.
 
Eff,

Do you feel the 13" Mac Pro 2.9 running i7 might be sufficient?

thanks
 
I have the macbook air those guys are talking about i7 2.0G and 512SSD 8GB ram which I am using right now to write this post
You can edit the footage if you don't convert it to other formats but forget about re-encoding the files to produce a final output that fries the fan when you want to create a high quality output (H.264 level 4.1@hp)
If we are talking about the standard files produced by iMovie (that take 5-10 times the space a well compressed file would take) it does the job still takes a long time around 6x or 7x my iMac 3.4G Quad
A cheaper windows based lite notebook of course does not come even vaguely close

The main issue of the macbookair is the fan if you really press up on the CPU it can get to the point of self switch off, this may be because I really stress the compression

If you instead want so simply select scenes and then move all your events and projects for final processing on a bigger beast than it is just fine, only avoid the final encoding
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/peregrine/

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