Editing in Vegas with a laptop and external hd?
 

I primarily do most of my editing on my desktop machine but I'm about to upgrade my laptop who's power will rival that of my desktop. I was thinking about getting an external hd and do some editing on the road with it. My questions are....

1- Is there a benefit to using an external hd via an IEEE interface over USB 2.0. I know USB 2 is actually faster than IEEE but I heard somewhere there "was" a benefit to using IEEE- is this true?

2- The internal hd is an 80gig 4200 EIDE... a bit slow. Will that hinder my performance while editing (keeping in mind I'll be using an external, 7200rpm 8mg cache, drive for all my media)? Is a 4200rpm drive sufficient to even run the editing app itself baring my media is available on another (much faster drive)?

3- How's network rendering work with an 802.11b wireless lan?

While in theory USB 2.0 is supposed to be faster than Firewire, in the real world this never ends up being the case. Firewire is much more suited to live video editing due to the constant back and forth nature of communication over the wire when editing video. USB 2.0 is much more geared towards moving data in one direction at a time.

In addition, USB 2.0 requires some system overhead that causes it to slow down and never reach 'laboratory speeds' in the real world.

As far as using an external drive, there is no reason really to sweat it. It will work wonderfully, and without hesitation. This is a subject we've dealt with a few times here, but to reiterate, the throughput of firewire is greater than what is needed for live video. In addition, when you're actually rendering, your processor definitely cannot render faster than the firewire can put through the wire unless you have an uber-super-computer.

Many, many people run their DV projects off external drives - do not fear it!

And as far as network rendering, you'll want to use wireless-G for that, not wireless-B. Wireless-B caps at 11MBit whereas Wireless-G takes you up to 54Mbit - a difference you will need if you want the cross-network communication to be as fast as it can be. But ideally, you don't want to do this over a wireless connection. What happens in mid-render if your connection drops? Yuk.

Thanks for the input. Looks like I'll be sticking with the wireless router for internet only.

Looking forward to seeing Vegas5 on a 17" widescreen laptop!

Glen,

I've been doing quite a bit of editing on a laptop (since it's about 4 times faster than my desktop). The external hard drive connected via firewire is a wonderful addition. It is both larger and faster than the internal 5400rpm 60 Gig drive. I have the deck connected to the firewire drive and all seems to be working well.

Is this possible:

-Start a project (wedding) on my desktop but put all the media including the .veg file on the external drive.

-When I'm away on weekends work on the project by simply connecting the external drive to my laptop


That would be great! I could work a bit on it at home- dissconnect the drive and work a bit more on it on the run with my laptop. In theory the project should stay in tact barring the media and prerenders stay on the external drive at all times.
What sort of probelms could I run into with this workflow? The only one that comes to mind is the fact my Vegas 5 on my desktop is configured to store media, prerenders, temp files, etc on a secondary internal drive on my desktop. If I were to work on a project from a removable drive the prerenders/temp files would automatically be routed to the ones I assigned prior to getting the external drive.

...however, (just thinking out loud here) I'm not big on prerendering stuff anyway- and what is the Temp folder for anyway...I NEVER see anything in it.

Choosing between USB and Firewire
 

I chose for an external HD on USB because I only have one Firewire connection on my laptop. This way I can capture DV and store it on the USB HD using my laptop as well.

Dave, Fire Wire doesn't mess with the signal flow so you can use your drive while capturing even with only one slot on the laptop. You can daisy chain many external drives and add DV cam to this chain as well (something Edward mentioned).

Personally I have tested successfully such set up on my old notebook with externall 5400rpm drive (interanal 4200rpm). I'm buying now 5400rpm drive to replace my internal, but anyway I don't use this pc for editing - it's only AMD 500MHz:(.

Glen, I would recomend you to do same if possible - it will make all your system more responcive for sure. You can find the topic for the speed increase with faster 2.5" drives on the Tom's Hardware.com

Re: Choosing between USB and Firewire
 

<<<-- Originally posted by Dave Van den Eynde : I chose for an external HD on USB because I only have one Firewire connection on my laptop. This way I can capture DV and store it on the USB HD using my laptop as well. -->>>


That's exactly how I do it with one firewire port. Firewire from computer to hard drive. Firewire from hard drive to deck/camera/convertor. Capture OR PTT THROUGH the drive TO/FROM the drive works fine. No need for USB in the mix.

<<<-- Originally posted by Glen Elliott : Is this possible:

-Start a project (wedding) on my desktop but put all the media including the .veg file on the external drive.

-When I'm away on weekends work on the project by simply connecting the external drive to my laptop -->>>

Yes that is possible. However, it will work BEST if the firewire drive has the same drive letter on each machine. Otherwise it won't be able to find the media when you switch machines and have to ask where it is located.

Well I got it last night. Toshiba Satellite P25 series....3ghz w/ 800mhz fsb, 512megs of PC2100 ram (I'm going to upgrade to a GIG), internal DVD+/-R, 80gig hd, and a beautiful 17" WXGA Widescreen LCD (1400x900). I also picked up a Maxtor 200gig external one-touch drive, and a wireless Linksys router.

I spent the greater part of last night cleaning off all the junk they put on the machine from the factory. UGH- my startup must of had 15 items in it!

Oh, that model of widesceen LCD has a big bug in it where it will explode after an hour of use. Quick, pack it up and ship it to me so that you don't get hurt.

;)

17" Widescreens do look great!
 

The widescreens are great for Vegas because the Timeline is much longer than on a 4:3 AR screen. I use 17"WS notebook for HDV editing with Vegas and it looks sooo good. Good luck with your new toy. I think your going to love it.

Mike

<<<-- Originally posted by Imran Zaidi : While in theory USB 2.0 is supposed to be faster than Firewire, in the real world this never ends up being the case. -->>>

See also my "limited" test with my own firewire drive that
supports firewire and USB2.

My conclusion seems to concur with Imran's line above, although
the difference isn't much with my test.

Very nice writeup/test Rob!

>>Well I got it last night. Toshiba Satellite P25 series<<
My son has an older version and has been using it extensively for editing. He has a complete studio (with external HD) he carries around on his back, including a analog to dv to anolog converter.
I recomended he get the Belkin 3 port firewire pcmcia card to make things easier. Go's for about 40.00 US at BestBuy. Allows me to hook up hard drive and my m-audio 410 firewire at the same time.