Laptop for editing
 

Hello,

Looking at new laptops for editing with vegas, kind of on a budget.. have always had Sony, but am looking at HP..Does anyone else edit with an HP laptop?/ No problem with software (mainly vegas) seeing the Firewire port ??

what if the system does not have a firewire port, and you add one via PCMIA card ?? does this work out ok ??

any feedback apprectiated..

Thanks !!

After my piece of garbage IBM Thinkpad died, I priced out a Dell laptop with everything that I wanted and found that it ran about $3,500. I didn't happen to have $3,500 to spare so I looked around. I ended up buying a refurbished HP Pavilion ze5170 from Tiger Direct for $1,200. P4 2.0 512 RAM, 40 gig drive, firewire, DVD/CD-R, usb, LAN, modem. It had all the bells and about 7/8ths of the whistles that I was looking for.

For Vegas it has been great. I added a 60 MB external firewire drive. The laptop has no problems recognizing the firewire connections for either the deck or the drive. The drive has a pass through so I can capture from the deck to the drive through the computer with no problems. Great machine for the money.

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicati...u=h30-1010%20p

Hello,

Thanks Rick for that good inormation !! This site is a really great and useful site..

Would like to hear of any others using laptops to edit.. and their configurations..

mike

I'm using a laptop from Earl Foote at www.pcnirvana.com. It has worked very well with Vegas. No problems with capturing, editing, or printing.

Hello,

thanks for replying Ed.. Your reply triggered another question i had.. What screen resoulution are you running on your laptop to run Vegas.?? Is it 1024 by 768 ? Is this the minimum resoulution vegas will run here ? Maybe you are running a higher resolution.??

Thanks,
mike

The one thing that I wasn't crazy about in buying the HP Pavilion was the screen resolution of 1024 x 768. The previous machine I was using I had the screen set to 1280 x 960 when editing in Vegas.

I have been pleasantly surprised how well I can edit even at 1024 x 768. Of course I can edit at much higher resolutions if I use an external monitor, but that pretty well does away with the mobility of a laptop.

I use a DELL Latitude C800 (from work) with 256 MB of memory
running Windows 2000 Professional. I have an external Maxtor
firewire drive (160 GB) and a Canon XL1s. No problems with
either of them running on my laptop.

I also have a standalone system (768 mb / Win XP Prof.) with
a firewire card (3 ports) and Promise ATA133 controller. Everything
just runs fine on this as well. Gotta love Plug and P(l)(r)ay these
days!

It actually came at around 1600 x ???. I actually had to reduce the resolution in order to read the screen. I think I reduced it to somewhere around 1100 x ???. I'd have to boot it up to look for the actual numbers.

Alienware!
 

I bought a Alienware laptop.
It is big, heavy and expensive but the best you can get!

Laptop NLE
 

I use a Gateway 600 XL with XP Pro using Premiere 6.5 and can do what I need in the field such as cutting together clips for post previews or compression. The problem with complex effects or multiple tracks when cutting with laptops is the 5400 RPM drive. Your not going to get the reliability and seek time as with 72K or 10K drives. Overall, it is a workhorse. It runs about 2500.00 but they're running specials all the time. I got a free desktop system with this purchase.

Whenever buying computer hardware over the Internet it's always a good idea to check out Reseller Ratings to read reviews of online retailers. One of the more highly regarded online retailers for laptops is Power Notebooks. Check out their ratings here. Perhaps you could custom build one for DV editing?

Hello,

James Emory said

"The problem with complex effects or multiple tracks when cutting with laptops is the 5400 RPM drive. Your not going to get the reliability and seek time as with 72K or 10K drives. "


i noticed most laptops use a 5400 rpm drive, and i always thought a 7200 rpm drive was required for DV editing.. Anyway as far as not being able to do complex effects and multiple tracks.. i am assuming you are talking about realtime editing ? I would think if you render you could do these things, even with a 5400 rpm drive..


mike

Drive speed
 

You can definitely edit video but it will just not be as efficient as using faster drives. Also, even though partitioned, the drive is shared with all other functions of the laptop instead of having dedicated drives for a/v. I haven't done any complex projects with the laptop yet as with the desktop NLE and the lack of real time effects has taken some getting used to. I definitely will not rely on the laptop for finished work until technology provides faster drives and real time effects. It is a great tool to have with me at any time if I have an idea and want to cut something together quickly to see how it looks.

Laptop drive speed can be an issue, though less and less of one. The old 5400 vs 7200 speed thing seems to be a non-issue. I use 120 gig 5400 WD drives in my desk top editing computer without a problem. (My only problem is that 120 gigs seems a lot smaller than it used to be.)

Drive speed
 

If you haven't used a system with 10K SCSI drives, then you don't know what you're missing. Everything is instant when I need it on the desktop NLE with NO dropped frames whereas with the laptop, there is a delay at times with the 54K drives and occassional dropped frames on imports. I don't think laptops are there yet for complex projects with existing internal drives.

On my desktop editor I got rid of my scsi drives about a year ago. Too hot, noisy and expensive. I am very happy with my new cheap EIDE 5400 drives.

Just my experience.

I'n running 1400x1050. Max my screen goes. It looks very nice on
my DELL's LCD screen and I don't ever want any lower resolution
again.

Laptop's drives aren't the speediest ones around indeed,
althought I really haven't experienced dropped frames on mine.

I bought myself an external firewire drive (7200 rpm) and have
been quite happy with it.

Laptop NLE
 

I'm about to make the plunge into DV editing and must have portability. I have the impression I'll be better off with a separate system drive from media drive, and that 7200 rpm would be valuable for the media. I also want to burn DVDs, so I'm thinking at least one of these drives will have to be external. Any advice about what should be internal or external, USB vs. firewire for these items, and if I want to be able to capture analog as well as DV, will I need a third party capture card?

Hello,

I believe your thinking is right in having a separate drive for your media.. There are some nice Firewire and USB2 (you want to make sure you go with USB2 and not USB1.1) drives out now that are external and 7200 rpm.. I have seen them as big as 200 gig..Pretty nice for storing your video..Firewire and USB2 are pretty close in speed with the USB2 getting the edge.. But there may be more firewire drives available, only becuase it has been out longer..As far as burning DVD's ... I was going to buy a laptop with a DVD burner, but it looks like the internal ones are slower in write speed (usually a 1x) versus some of the external ones which can write as high 4X..So I will probably opt for an external burner..

As far as Analog cards.. Hmm not up on those so i will refrain from any comments..

mike

Keep in mind that not all systems have an USB2 port. So you
might need to upgrade those (if possible). I bought a Maxtor
5000DV 160 gb harddisk (they go to 250 gb) which has two
firewire ports and one USB2 (and 1.1) port. It is a 7200 rpm drive
with 8 MB cache.

It does always require a seperate power brick to work and
you need to install drivers (500 kb) on every OS I tried it on
(Win 2000 / XP).