Editing question
 

I am the proud owner of an HD-1 ($2425--no tax, free shipping, thank you very much). I'm astounded by the picture, even on my SD Sony 32 ".

I'm planning on shooting a full length feature on it in late October/early November. So now, with a limited budget I'm looking for a computer. From reading this site religiously it seems like the editing will have to be uncompressed, especially if my hope is to eventually project it on a large screen. Found this computer at Best Buy for $1800. Is it good enough, fast enough, etc. to edit HD-1 footage?

Details:
" Toshiba Satellite Notebook with Intel® Pentium® 4 Processor 3.06GHz, Model: A25-S3072"
"From multimedia to number crunching, this portable performancer delivers peak performance. "

Intel® Pentium® 4 processor 3.06GHz, with 533MHz system bus
512MB DDR SDRAM for multitasking power, expandable to 2.0GB

Dont buy from a local supplier, thats always a waste of money. Go to www.dell.com and grab something there. Really good deals can be had by buying some of the refurbished equipment (although I'd never buy a refurb laptop).

I disagree about going to a local supplier. Perhaps it is only in my location (Vancouver) but you can look up the parts yourself and get a local dealer to give you everything you need and even put it together. You just have to do a little research.

I'm biased, but go Apple with FCP and Mullen's 4HDV.

Also, buy a DAT for audio! Most mini-dv cameras (and the HD1 and HD10) are unbalanced and it makes for some crappy hiss or a canned sound. I'll never go through the camera again!

heath

Thanks for the input, guys:) As far as the specs listed above are concerned, are they good enough? I'd love to use a laptop with external hard drives because I'm going to have to be awfully mobile for the next six months. There are no fancy special effects in the movie, just some extended double exposures a la Apocolypse Now.

Heath, how many man hours will synching DAT to image add to the editing process?

I own both PCs and Macs but am very biased towards the Mac as everything to do with video and audio just "work" seamlessly on the Mac, no .dll's, blaster bugs etc. etc. and best of all, no Windoze! But having said that, right at this minute, the only native editing options appear to be on the PC (Vegas, Premiere, Womble). I'm interested to hear how Steve Mullen's Mac FCP tools work though, as having used both Premiere and FCP extensively I think FCP is the beez kneez!
I wish you the very best with your movie, let us know how it goes, I hope to do the same myself shortly!

Trust me, go with DAT, even if adds time to your editing. The sound is really canned through the HD10, has a hiss through an XL-1 or GL-1.

heath

Heath,

What methods do you use to synchronize your DAT audio to your video footage?

<<<-- Originally posted by Gints Klimanis : Heath,

What methods do you use to synchronize your DAT audio to your video footage? -->>>

I don't personally have one, but my friend and I used a time code-matching DAT and were able to easily sync everything up in post.

heath

Betsy,

I bought an HD-10 a couple of months ago, so I know how excited you must be. I have been using a Toshiba 2805-S503 for a couple years now to edit DV. It's only a 900MHz P3, well below the specs for the software for the HD-10 (1), but I am able to capture and lay back to tape flawlessly. Finding edit points (especially audio cues) is tricky - but do-able. A friend's 2.6GHz P4 is smoooth. I have 80GHz and 40GHZ firewire drives, as well as a Pioneer A03 DVD burner in an ADS firewire case. I just loop them all together - capture to the firewire drives.

The Toshiba has an Nvidia GeForce2Go video module, which supports the directdraw window (the video window) on both the internal and external monitors at the same time. A friend's Sony VAIO (model?) only showed purple instead of video on the external monitor. In fact, the Toshiba can show the video in the small editing window on the laptop screen, while showing that video full screen on the external CRT display - very useful!

I would not hesitate to recommend Toshiba's laptops for editing.

The software included with the JVC is klunky and inadequate for any serious work, so your computer decision should be made after your software decision - and new software will be coming fast. I use Ulead's Media Studio Pro for DV, and I love its ease of use and flexibility. Ulead says M2T support will be coming soon. That will be my next move!

Good luck!

Thanks David:) So you're saying that with the right software I can edit uncompressed (decompressed?) HD-1 footage on a 3Ghz laptop? Is 1 Gig of memory enough do you think? And an 80 Gig hard drive--supplemented with external Hard drives?

More on audio
 

I think it's tougher to fix the audio recorded directly through the HD10 than to sync up the audio from a DAT.

Also, you CANNOT control the audio AT all on the HD10. It's totally automatic.

heath

A 1 gig PC(or lower) can edit uncompressed. It is your HD's and PCI bus that gets swamped. If you are just doing basic cuts/fades with no real compositing of footage then 7200rpm non raid drives will be fine. Just have a lot of them. Have someone who knows computers partition and set up your drives for NLE. Most all computers come pre configured with just one big partition C: drive. Also use the fast internal drives for active editing and the firewire drives for storage and back-up. Also buy a couple extra batteries at purchase time. You can usually get a deal, you will need them, and will greatly improve the resale value down the road.
But to be truthfull unless you are really moving around a lot, get a desktop. It will cost you half as much. You will then be able to afford Premiere with Aspect HD.

I thought I read that to edit HDV, you should have a 2 ghz PC minimum...

heath

Editing on a laptop
 

To Betsy,

I'm not sure if these guys are reading your post right. Your trying to edit UNCOMPRESSED HD on a laptop? The main issue your going to have is the hard drives. Most notebook drives are slow (4200-5400rpm) Then there's the issue of load, once you get going and start building a sizable project (you said a full length feature), you've got alot of stuff going on for your PC.

Currently, I have completed a short film on the HD10U. I did some playing around on my laptop a Pentium M 1.4 (that runs faster than a 2gig) 512ram, 60gig hdd and yea it's possible... but I don't recommend it. I've only tinkerd around with compressed stuuf on the laptop. At the office I have a Dell Workstation Dual 2gig w/ U320 SCSI drives for video editing, I'm setting up RAID this week, so then I can see doing uncompressed.

I'm not going to tell you not to do it. But if you are I hope you a VERY patient person and this is not mission critical.