dissapointing i7 laptop experience
 

Hi everyone,

I recently bought a new laptop

Dell Studio 15
i7 q720 1.60ghz
4 gb ram
w7 64
ATI mobility radeon 5470 1gb
HD 500gb 5400rpm

with the idea of being able to edit on the go or when my desktop is busy rendering, etc... I mostly use premiere cs4 and footage coming from Canon 7D and Sony EX1.
But i'm really dissapointed as premiere is barely capable of opening HD video and it chokes every time that you press play on the timeline. It might play for 10 secs but freezes as soon as there's a clip change.
Surely this laptop should be able to perform better than that? what am i doing wrong? is this it?

thanks in advance

If you mean the 720QM, it's got roughly half the horsepower of the recommended i7 920 or 930 chip you'd put in a decent editing desktop machine. You're way low in RAM, your HDD is too slow and you've only got one of them, and your video card doesn't allow for the acceleration possible if you decide to upgrade to CS5.

There's a reason everyone says you won't be happy editing on a laptop. You'd need to pay many times what a good editing desktop would be for decent performance. Premiere is a well-known resource hog. CS5 is better than CS4. Vegas might give you a decent chance with that config. The timeline issue you describe points to the Hard Disk performance.

Reduce the playback resolution to reduce the CPU overhead. If its still giving you problems, then its the hard drive, and editing from a single drive will give you problem no matter what.

Download and test Edius 5.5 for a month for free - you'll be shocked at the realtime capabilities - even with your somewhat underpowered processor - my old core duo 2ghz Vaio plays EX1 HD footage no problem with CC and other effects - but NOT with Premiere, no way.

Paul

Hey Paul, any update on your screen tearing problem?

The problem is CS4, not the laptop. That laptop is fine as long as you can keep the LCD screen from dying (I have a friend that has had his LCD screen on his Dell Studio XPS die twice in the few months he's owned it).

Things I would try:

1. Download the trial version of CS5. I'm running CS5 now and it's speed difference is amazing. Playback is similar to Edius now, and you get the added ability to actually have mainstream third party companies' plugins and Dynamic Link capability with After Effects, Photoshop, etc. I have both Edius and Premiere and I choose to edit on Premiere. The only thing I keep Edius for is Procoder Express, which does a fantastic job downscaling HD to SD DVD.

2. Make sure you are not editing footage off of your system drive or a slow USB drive. If you have access to a power supply where you are editing, I'd suggest editing off of an external eSATA drive. That laptop has the eSATA port built in. If you can't do that, then maybe think about upgrading your system drive to a very fast 256gb SSD and edit off of that.

3. Invest in Cineform Neoscene or NeoHD (FirstLight in NeoHD is REALLY cool).

Note that the trial version of Premiere doesn't do any form of MPEG, so he can't try it out with HD material.

Yes, CS4 is so buggy that editing using that version of Premiere on even an overclocked desktop rig with a decent GPU is an exercise in frustration. Been there, done that. CS5 is significantly better, but the laptop is still a bit less than ideal for use with CS5 especially with AVCHD.

Hi Steve, I'm just having to live with it for now, I'm absolutely convinced its a 50hz/PAL issue, I don't think its possible to load 2 frame rate frequencies into one GPU card, so my GTX285 computer monitor output is set to the native of my Samsung computer monitor, which is 60Hz by default, the other output is "fixed" at 60Hz too, but is being fed with PAL at 50Hz, hence the tearing. Using a second card, a 9800, I can set the framerate output to 50Hz when driving an external 50Hz monitor, but it makes no difference at all to the tearing issue, as though the "system" can only accept one frame timebase.

I added a Grass Valley Spark card as well, this gives fabulous output quality from Edius, After Effects, Photoshop, Combustion.... but it's not designed to work with Premiere, I wish I was a good reverse engineer, the Spark would be such a great add on for PPro.

Paul

hi guys,

I'm starting to lose my patience and hope as i upgraded both the memory (8gb now) and the hard drive (7200 rpm now) and i think that the performance is even worse! Sometimes it wouldn't even load the project files. All this testing is being done while editing files stored in na eSata drive. I've tried changing the scratch disk location, the 'optimize for' option...you name it!
It's really annoying because I know people who have a not so powerful laptop and they can edit within Vegas for example with no problem whatsoever. I might have to migrate to Vegas or something else as i need to have the same software on both computers in order to run the same files at any single time.
I could also upgrade to Premiere CS5 but.....is it really that different? It's really frustrating, I',m wasting plenty of time and money and this thing doesn't work at all!

thanks

People are having better luck with Vegas because they are using Vegas. As everyone has been saying for some time now, Premiere is huge and bloated and CS4 may be the worst version of all. More RAM isn't going to help that much as CS4 is a 32-bit app that can't use all your RAM.

Many threads here and elsewhere that say don't try to use Premiere on a laptop. Now you know why.

Try Cineform, as Craig suggested. They have a free fully functional trial that can transcode your media into something easier for your system to handle. Then try the free Vegas trial. Or try Edius, as others have suggested. But as Paul said, not CS4, no way.

CS5 is better than CS4 but I doubt it will fully solve your hardware issues.

In fact, I've been trying Vegas trial and it runs smoothly on my laptop, it's even capable of playing HD clips with a few effects on real-time, i was pleasantly surprised.
I don't understand how the performance can be so different! This might mean that I will be moving to Vegas altogether. It's a shame because I like premiere and the integration with AFX but can't afford to be struggling with the software everyday.

I have the bigbrother, Dell XPS Studio 16" , i7 720QM, 6gb mem, 256gb SSD

I can use Premiere Pro CS5 without any serious problems. I'm thinking about getting a USB3 expansion card and an external USB3 disk for more space.

I have reinstalled my laptop with a clean Win 7 x64 ultimate - all drivers are updated.

My machine gets 6.7 in Windows Experience Index.

// Lazze

yep, i recently downloaded CS5 and the diference in performance is amazing. I can even play clips with real time effects applied to them! I might reconsider buying CS5. Vegas is great but it lacks a few features that i consider extremely important i.e.: sequences

What resolution are you running your laptop at? I am looking into purchasing one but was unsure whether I can get around the minimum resolution requirements. I was thinking I could at least "trick" CS5 into installing if I hook up an external monitor and use it as my primary while I install.

At least the Dell XPS Studio 16 has a RGBLED LCD as option, full HD, 1900x1200

// Lazze

Technically, CS5 has a minimum screen resolution requirement of 1280x900.

Looking at the Dell site, the specs for the XPS Studio 16 shows 1920x1080 for the resolution. However, they do offer a 1920x1200 display but .... it's in their M6500 series laptops ... Dell Precision M6500 & M6500 Covet Mobile Workstation | Dell

Also, Sager offers one as well, though it's not a LED LCD display ... custom gaming laptops - Welcome to Sager Notebooks

that sager is huge. its as powerful as a desktop though.

maybe you would wanna get what i got instead. its the sager 8690. mine has the i7 720qm, 4gig 1333mhz RAM, 280m gtx gpu, full hd 1920x1080 led screen, 500 gig hdd, bluray.
the screen is gorgeous but wont give you as many colors as an rgb. for my work on 720p and a few 1080p videos, the i7 720 is adequate but i would suggest you get at least an i7 840qm. the 280m will acelerate hd video playback and effects if you apply the primiere nvidia gpu hack. also get an ssd or fast hdd as premiere accesses the disk a lot.
a system like that would come out to around 1700-1800USD with an ssd. not bad at all. for the power you get. just be sure to get the nvidia version since cs5 doesnt support acceleration via ATI cards.

1920x1080 is correct, I'm always mixing up the numbers. 1920x1080 is true HD and Widescreen.

I stand corrected :-)

// Lasse

Iste 2010
 

I am a computer/technology teacher and just attended the ISTE 2010 convention/conference in Denver last week. Adobe and a big booth there as did Dell and a number of other manufacturers. The conference is geared toward teachers who use technology (any technology) in their classrooms and is a big draw each year. Just think NAB for geek teachers. (I am one, so I can say that! ;) )

Adobe showed their CS5 Production Suite there using a MacPro laptop. The footage they used was native RED. It sailed through the demo. (I realize, though, that demos are just that. A demo of what MAY be possible.)

Dell was really marketing their netbooks to schools, but I asked a few of their reps about CS% on a laptop and their recommendation was NOT Alienware, but Precision workstations. We went through a few rounds of, no it's not possible, to yes, it is possible.

I used my wiles as a teacher who makes the final decision, to get the two together and the Adobe guys installed Premiere Pro CS5 on the lone Dell Precision laptop. It ran 64 bit Win 7, with 6GB of RAM and had a simple 250GB 7200 RPM single HD. It also had an nVidia 1800m video card. The system worked realitively nicely. We had no external RAID (G-RAID, or other device for video), nor was I able to "tweak" the list of Mercury GPU's to add the 1800M. I had shott a number of scenes using my Canon T2i at 1080 mode and we directly copied them to the Precision using the built-in SDHC port.

Once we set the resolution at playback on the device to its minimum, I was able to edit as normal and produce, without undue hiccups, a final 5 minute piece. (Basically, I just cut and pasted a bunch of shots; added random transitions, generated an AVI movie and played it back.

It wasn't bad at all! I can't see editing a feature with this setup, but for newsgathering, short and quickie edits, even a 7 minute film for the 48 hour Film Project, yes I can see it being very useful!

My observations... your mileage will vary... Enjoy!

That seems like a rockin' little 15" Sager you got there. A 15" w/1920x1080 resolution is a bit tricky to find in a laptop....but a definite must if one is to enjoy the full beauty of BluRay's!! Will definitely keep that one in mind.

Thanks Robert.

** Hmmm....I wonder if they "tweaked/hacked" the GPU in the MBP?!

** Thanks for your observations on this; though I'm curious to find out how a fully loaded (and tweaked) M6500 would perform utilizing CS5 PPro.

I'm asking for real world experience. Can you get around that spec by installing while connected to an external monitor, and if so, will CS5 launch once the monitor is set back to the laptop's LCD and at 1366x768. That's what I want to know. I don't have a laptop to try it on. My current one doesn't meet minimum specs for CPU, RAM, etc, so I can't even test the resolution issue.

sagers are not usually available thru retail. but this is the best place to buy them:

Gaming Laptops - XOTIC PC - Gaming Notebooks - Custom Laptops - Custom Notebooks

also one of the best in customer service. although it is sold as a gaming laptop, the sager 8690 is as close as youll get to a portable workstation imho. my only regret is that i should have gooten the 820qm cpu instead.
they did just come out with the sager 9285 which is a 17inch notebook. it has the new nvidia 480m gtx gpu, 1200p HD screen, uses the i7-980x desktop cpu and can house 3 hdd/ssd's in many raid configs. if youre looking for a real workstation this is it. it is much bigger/heavier than the 8690 though and costlier at around 3500usd or more. but check it out if you truly want a beast.

my bad. you posted about the 9285 a few posts ago :D

What did you end up doing in terms of NLE and Adobe After Effects? I'm looking at an off-the-shelf Sony laptop with a i7 740QM (1.78Ghz) and am wondering if this might be good enough to run After Effects.

i dont use it extensively but have played around with AE CS5 a bit. id say you would need at least an 840qm and a fast mobile CUDA gpu to even have a chance of rendering your previews in realtime.