Laptops for Vegas?

Glen Elliott · August 18th, 2004, 07:58 PM

Yeah when I bought my Toshiba it was between the P25 and an HP widescreen model.

Powerbook? Are you kidding- for the same price my 3.0ghz P4 Toshiba runs circles around a powerbook. Plus the Toshiba can run Vegas. ;)

Gustavo Nardelli · August 18th, 2004, 08:56 PM

Glen:

You do have to replace the 2 x 256 in order to upgrade to 1 GB. I bought 2 x 512 and gave my 256's on exchange. Hard to give you a precise quote, but it did cost me around US$300.00 here in Brazil.

If you can affort the upgrade, no matter the cost, it worth every dime. It's became a brand new machine.

Kindest Regards,
Gus

Lorinda Norton · January 27th, 2006, 07:24 PM

Hi,

This thread is pretty old, so I'm assuming some of you have upgraded. I've just about had it with these pieces of crap desktop PCs I've been trying to use. I'd like to see if I can afford something that will edit Vegas (I've still got version 5) and burn to DVD; essentially, I would like to replace my desktop machines altogether. Being able to take it to town with me would be really helpful.

If you're happy with what you're using these days, care to share? Specs would be most welcome. :)

Edward Troxel · January 27th, 2006, 09:32 PM

Wow... this thread was revived after a year and a half!

I like editing on my laptop. I have a Sager, 3.4GHz Pentium 4, 800MHz FSB, 1 Gig ram, two 60Gig 7200RPM drives, and 17" widescreen.

Milt Lee · January 27th, 2006, 10:45 PM

Yep it is amazing, but hey - we always want to move up.

So here's what I'm looking for, and I wonder if somebody out there has put together a system recently.

I'm running Vegas 6.0C, and I want to build a desktop. Thinking I'll be doing HD fairly soon, so I wanted to find out what the right way to go: Lots of Ram or Duel core processor? I'm feeling like a AMD 4800 would be fine, but can I do it with 1 gig of ram? The next thing is a video card, with a duel monitor setup - suggestions? Finally what are folks using for sound cards these days? I've been using a hammerfall DSP multilink for a while, but I think that there are probably newer cards out there, or are there motherboards with decent sound these days? My issue with built in sound has always been the lack of decent - that is quarter inch - ins and outs. So folks there you have - I guess the last piece is a nice quiet power supply. I've used Seagate Baracudas for years so I'm sticking with that.

I'd love to hear if anybody has build a machine like this lately.

Thanks!
Milt

Douglas Spotted Eagle · January 27th, 2006, 11:31 PM

Milt,
John Rofrano has built a system identical to the training systems we use for clients. http://www.johnrofrano.com/pcequipment.htm
this is a smokin', not too expensive system, that he's doing HDV on, as are we for clients that come to Utah for training.

Colfax International builds these very nicely for video, so does Velocity Micro. Colfax has outstanding customer support, and while Velocity has a slightly nicer case, they have the crappiest customer support I've ever encountered. We ended up building 4 of our own after the Velocity Micro experience.

Glenn Chan · January 28th, 2006, 12:22 AM

In my opinion, you could save a lot of money off Johnny's configuration and not notice anything. Some of the parts are premium-priced and don't really make a difference for video editing.

In particular, the premium/low-latency RAM and the 10k rpm Raptor.

low latency RAM doesn't make a difference
hard drive speed on rendering

The motherboard you should be able to save money on. I never really understood the point of the premium-priced motherboards... that have lots of features you probably won't use.

For low noise, silentpcreview.com has lots of great info on what parts are quiet. Last time I checked seasonic had quiet PSUs, and samsung hard drives are the quietest (followed by seagate) [rubber grommeting is one way to reduce hard drive noise, as is enabling AAM].

2- RAM: If you run many programs at once (i.e. multiple instances of vegas, photoshop in background, web browser, etc.) then more RAM will help. Otherwise 1GB should be fine. As far as I know, HD(V) doesn't make a difference in RAM consumption.

3-Motherboard sound: Unless it's digital in/out, analog sound will always be compromised by interference from everything else on the motherboard. You can hear interference when transferring files over the network or whatever.

Milt Lee · January 28th, 2006, 01:18 PM

Thanks guys - I hadn't seen the m-audio 410 and it looks very very hot. Exciting to say the least. I'm also going to check out the whole - low noise/no noise thing as I'm tired of not being able to just lay down a voice track without going through a whole move to the other room thing.

I didn't see a monitor there - suggestions? I am hooked on duel monitors for vegas, and I"m even thinking of doing 2 for editing, and an external for preview, and final rendition (did I say that?)

What's the deal with the monitors - are you guys getting a big old plazma thing so that you can see all the detail, or is a smaller but more acurate display a better idea?

Thanks again,
Milt

Milt Lee · January 28th, 2006, 01:20 PM

One more thing - I'm not a gamer so what is the best quiet video card out there for editing? Suggestions?

Milt

Douglas Spotted Eagle · January 28th, 2006, 04:10 PM

Any video card will do. Vegas doesn't take advantage of many of the hardware accelerations created for gamers anyway.
As far as the display, hopefully no one here is using a plasma. Plasma not only WON'T show the detail, but would die a fast, costly death. Plasma has serious problems with burn-in. LCD doesn't. If you're doing HD, you pretty well need an LCD system, but if you're doing SD, you pretty well need a CRT for external monitoring. For the computer monitors themselves, anything will do, CRT or LCD.

Lorinda Norton · January 28th, 2006, 06:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Edward Troxel

Wow... this thread was revived after a year and a half!

Heh heh. Waste not... :)

Edward, I haven't tried to price one with the specs you listed (I'm assuming it's a custom build), but I will. Never heard of Sager until now. Thanks so much!

Milt Lee · January 28th, 2006, 07:46 PM

Yep, thanks for the good monitor info.

As for SAGER, I used one for a year and really loved it. Very fast, good price, alot more computer for the money if you need or want a laptop. I edited video on mine all the time I had it, and it never let me down.

Milt

January 27th, 2006, 07:24 PM	#18
Lorinda Norton Wrangler Join Date: Nov 2001 Location: Southwest Idaho, USA Posts: 3,066	new info? Hi, This thread is pretty old, so I'm assuming some of you have upgraded. I've just about had it with these pieces of crap desktop PCs I've been trying to use. I'd like to see if I can afford something that will edit Vegas (I've still got version 5) and burn to DVD; essentially, I would like to replace my desktop machines altogether. Being able to take it to town with me would be really helpful. If you're happy with what you're using these days, care to share? Specs would be most welcome. :) __________________ Lorinda

January 27th, 2006, 09:32 PM	#19
Edward Troxel Sponsor: JET DV Join Date: Dec 2001 Location: Southern Illinois Posts: 7,953	Wow... this thread was revived after a year and a half! I like editing on my laptop. I have a Sager, 3.4GHz Pentium 4, 800MHz FSB, 1 Gig ram, two 60Gig 7200RPM drives, and 17" widescreen. __________________ Edward Troxel [SCVU] JETDV Scripts/Scripting Tutorials/Excalibur/Montage Magic/Newsletters

January 27th, 2006, 10:45 PM	#20
Milt Lee Major Player Join Date: Jan 2004 Location: Cass Lake MN Posts: 221	Yep it is amazing, but hey - we always want to move up. So here's what I'm looking for, and I wonder if somebody out there has put together a system recently. I'm running Vegas 6.0C, and I want to build a desktop. Thinking I'll be doing HD fairly soon, so I wanted to find out what the right way to go: Lots of Ram or Duel core processor? I'm feeling like a AMD 4800 would be fine, but can I do it with 1 gig of ram? The next thing is a video card, with a duel monitor setup - suggestions? Finally what are folks using for sound cards these days? I've been using a hammerfall DSP multilink for a while, but I think that there are probably newer cards out there, or are there motherboards with decent sound these days? My issue with built in sound has always been the lack of decent - that is quarter inch - ins and outs. So folks there you have - I guess the last piece is a nice quiet power supply. I've used Seagate Baracudas for years so I'm sticking with that. I'd love to hear if anybody has build a machine like this lately. Thanks! Milt __________________ Professional website - http://manykites.com Personal - http://mrdogsblog.com

January 27th, 2006, 11:31 PM	#21
Douglas Spotted Eagle VASST Join Date: Jan 2004 Location: Stockton, UT Posts: 5,648	Milt, John Rofrano has built a system identical to the training systems we use for clients. http://www.johnrofrano.com/pcequipment.htm this is a smokin', not too expensive system, that he's doing HDV on, as are we for clients that come to Utah for training. Colfax International builds these very nicely for video, so does Velocity Micro. Colfax has outstanding customer support, and while Velocity has a slightly nicer case, they have the crappiest customer support I've ever encountered. We ended up building 4 of our own after the Velocity Micro experience. __________________ Douglas Spotted Eagle/Spot Author, producer, composer Certified Sony Vegas Trainer http://www.vasst.com

January 28th, 2006, 01:18 PM	#23
Milt Lee Major Player Join Date: Jan 2004 Location: Cass Lake MN Posts: 221	Thanks guys - I hadn't seen the m-audio 410 and it looks very very hot. Exciting to say the least. I'm also going to check out the whole - low noise/no noise thing as I'm tired of not being able to just lay down a voice track without going through a whole move to the other room thing. I didn't see a monitor there - suggestions? I am hooked on duel monitors for vegas, and I"m even thinking of doing 2 for editing, and an external for preview, and final rendition (did I say that?) What's the deal with the monitors - are you guys getting a big old plazma thing so that you can see all the detail, or is a smaller but more acurate display a better idea? Thanks again, Milt __________________ Professional website - http://manykites.com Personal - http://mrdogsblog.com

August 18th, 2004, 07:58 PM	#16
Glen Elliott Wrangler Join Date: Apr 2003 Location: Philadelphia, PA Posts: 2,898	Yeah when I bought my Toshiba it was between the P25 and an HP widescreen model. Powerbook? Are you kidding- for the same price my 3.0ghz P4 Toshiba runs circles around a powerbook. Plus the Toshiba can run Vegas. ;)

August 18th, 2004, 08:56 PM	#17
Gustavo Nardelli Regular Crew Join Date: Jul 2004 Location: Brasília-DF Posts: 28	Glen: You do have to replace the 2 x 256 in order to upgrade to 1 GB. I bought 2 x 512 and gave my 256's on exchange. Hard to give you a precise quote, but it did cost me around US$300.00 here in Brazil. If you can affort the upgrade, no matter the cost, it worth every dime. It's became a brand new machine. Kindest Regards, Gus

January 28th, 2006, 12:22 AM	#22
Glenn Chan Inner Circle Join Date: Jun 2003 Location: Toronto, Canada Posts: 4,750	In my opinion, you could save a lot of money off Johnny's configuration and not notice anything. Some of the parts are premium-priced and don't really make a difference for video editing. In particular, the premium/low-latency RAM and the 10k rpm Raptor. low latency RAM doesn't make a difference hard drive speed on rendering The motherboard you should be able to save money on. I never really understood the point of the premium-priced motherboards... that have lots of features you probably won't use. For low noise, silentpcreview.com has lots of great info on what parts are quiet. Last time I checked seasonic had quiet PSUs, and samsung hard drives are the quietest (followed by seagate) [rubber grommeting is one way to reduce hard drive noise, as is enabling AAM]. 2- RAM: If you run many programs at once (i.e. multiple instances of vegas, photoshop in background, web browser, etc.) then more RAM will help. Otherwise 1GB should be fine. As far as I know, HD(V) doesn't make a difference in RAM consumption. 3-Motherboard sound: Unless it's digital in/out, analog sound will always be compromised by interference from everything else on the motherboard. You can hear interference when transferring files over the network or whatever.

January 28th, 2006, 01:20 PM	#24
Milt Lee Major Player Join Date: Jan 2004 Location: Cass Lake MN Posts: 221	One more thing - I'm not a gamer so what is the best quiet video card out there for editing? Suggestions? Milt __________________ Professional website - http://manykites.com Personal - http://mrdogsblog.com

January 28th, 2006, 04:10 PM	#25
Douglas Spotted Eagle VASST Join Date: Jan 2004 Location: Stockton, UT Posts: 5,648	Any video card will do. Vegas doesn't take advantage of many of the hardware accelerations created for gamers anyway. As far as the display, hopefully no one here is using a plasma. Plasma not only WON'T show the detail, but would die a fast, costly death. Plasma has serious problems with burn-in. LCD doesn't. If you're doing HD, you pretty well need an LCD system, but if you're doing SD, you pretty well need a CRT for external monitoring. For the computer monitors themselves, anything will do, CRT or LCD. __________________ Douglas Spotted Eagle/Spot Author, producer, composer Certified Sony Vegas Trainer http://www.vasst.com

January 28th, 2006, 07:46 PM	#27
Milt Lee Major Player Join Date: Jan 2004 Location: Cass Lake MN Posts: 221	Yep, thanks for the good monitor info. As for SAGER, I used one for a year and really loved it. Very fast, good price, alot more computer for the money if you need or want a laptop. I edited video on mine all the time I had it, and it never let me down. Milt __________________ Professional website - http://manykites.com Personal - http://mrdogsblog.com