I want to buy a new laptop computer for video editing. Any suggestions for a dream computer. Either Sony Dell or Toshiba. Thanks

Moved to PC Editing forum from Industry News.

I use an HP which I dearly love.

17" widescreen; 1680x1050 resolution
1GB DDR
60GB 7200 RPM HDD
DVD+/-RW drive

Ordered straight from HP.

I keep media on an external drive and I can edit on both the main machine and the laptop.

HDD speed is very important. My HP will not log video well with my mainline editor on a 4200rpm drive. Minimum should be at least 5400, 7200 if you can (but I do not like using IBM drives).

All of a sudden, HP has introduced 7200rpm 100GB harddrives in their laptops.
This is especially interesting to me since I just spoke with a customer service (sales rep) on the phone recently asking why 7200s were not available on their laptops and got at least 10mins worth of reasons why not.
These reasons included HP engineering deciding that 7200 was just too fast for laptops and problems would most certainly occur. I know of course that this guy is a "salesman" and would say most anything to keep me on the phone until I would buy what was available. Anyway they have them now.

That salesman has no clue. HP did not have them as they had not finished cert on them mostlikely and 100s are new.

1GB RAM is not a dream but necessity, I'd get 2 GB. Also you've never mentioned what software you are going to use. I would recomend nVdia 6800 at least. Now instead of dumping big money into a laptop I would get a cheaper laptop and a desktop. Unless you must use your computer on the go. You will always have more power in a desktop for the same money. Now if you already have a good desktop that's a different story. Again I'd rather spend money on some other equipment.

Regarding 60GB 7200 RPM vs 100 or 120GB 5400 RPM. The 7200 RPM HDD may not even be faster, but will defently be smaller and use more power. The reason is 100 and 120 GB drives will have more data density therefore faster sustained r/w speeds.

This is just my opinion.
Good Luck
Alex

Thanks to all. I have been using Pinnacle for several years. I am about to receive the new Version Studio plus 10 upgrade . I guess i'm one of the lucky ones, but I have not had a problem YET. I have a Dell desktop now, 120 gig, 1 ram . I need the portability . i am considering Sony ,toshiba ,or another Dell . will go withh 2 gigs Ram, 7200 RPM hard drive P4 2.6 .Any other suggestions appreciated '
Mike

Look for high-end mobility video with at least 128MB of dedicated memory. I have the X200 chipset and while ok, it is not too impressive. I think the ATI X600 chipset is now mobile as well as the nVidia 6600. After what we just found out about the X1800 chipset, I wish it were mobile (ATI is now working on encode/decode modules for it - will edit with link when I find it.)

Studio 9 captures without dropping frames on a 4200 (my workaround to Liquid dropping frames). I suspect VirtualDub can also capture on even the slowest drive. Not sure about S10 yet. And Liquid 7 is shipping with a new capture tool (Avid's) with low overhead.

Extreme Tech review on GPU accelerated transcoding (http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1880668,00.asp)

Yes get as good videocard as you can find. I have nVidia 6600 on mine. There is also ATI X700 mobile. One thing to note though with mobile video cards, while they might be called same names as their desktop counterparts they may need different drivers and they may not be compatible with other programs as well as desktop cards.

I'm a bit confused.
I remember when figuring out a configuration for my desktop, I was told that videocard dedicated RAM is not a big issue in video editing and that I should be more concerned with the other specs of my machine. And that the higher RAM video cards are more for gaming and 3d. I actually ended up getting a video card with only 32MB dedicated memory and it worked fine. Does this change with a laptop?

A laptop shouldn't be different.

You actually only need very little video RAM. It's the 3d gaming applications that take a lot of video RAM since it's used to store textures and things like that.


Check the recommended specs for the particular programs in question... they should tell you what you need.

if that's so glen, then why is it everyone is saying that a strong video card is important and that you should get one with at least 128mb dedicated ram?

my desktop has a matrox 550 which only has 32mb and it works great.

is the dedicated memory really THAT important for video editing and 2D animation? is having 32mb dedicated memory on a video card and 512 ram system memory better than just a shared memory video card (like the Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 900), assuming i don't do any gaming or 3D stuff at all?

FORGOT TO MENTION SOMETHING IN PREVIOUS POST.....
I MEANT TO SAY IN THE LAST PART:
.......is having a 32mb dedicated memory on a video card and 512MB of system memory better than just a shared memory video card (like the Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 900) and 1GB of system memory, assuming i don't do any gaming or 3D stuff at all?

if that's so glen, then why is it everyone is saying that a strong video card is important and that you should get one with at least 128mb dedicated ram?
Whatever the answer is, I don't think it's particularly important why people are saying that.

In practice, reading the recommended specs is a good starting point. It's also possible to run benchmarks on *relevant* tasks... although there's not really such benchmarks available.

glen, i don't mean to bug you about it... i just want to get to the bottom of this video card matter.

in your opinion, is there a reason why i should notice any significant difference between video editing on a set-up that has dedicated ram for video and 512mb system memory as opposed to a set up that the video ram is shared (like for example the video card i mentioned), but with 1GB system memory, so there's a lot to share of?

thanks,

adi

I would guess that the system with the 1GB RAM is faster.

Why:
Your programs can likely benefit from 1GB of RAM (over 512MB). When you run out of RAM, your system has to use the hard drive instead (which is like 60X slower). So you see dramatic slowdowns when Windows has to shift information from hard drive to RAM and vice versa. i.e. when switching between programs.

With on-board/integrated video, some of the system RAM is given to the video card (however much it needs or uses). You lose some RAM there.
The integrated video uses up some of the system's memory bandwidth, but that only hurts performance very very slightly.

Since it is probably Pinnacle software, video is important. The X200 chipset with 128MB of memory is just OK. A faster dedicated chipset would be better. I have a X200 with 128, and 512MB of RAM. If you have never run it on anything else, it would just be ok. It is slow if you compare it to a regular full-time editor. Remember that Pinnacle (now Avid) uses DirectX 9c for a lot of its operations in both Studio 10 and Liquid 5 or later. GPU performance is important.

I just saw this thread that has GPUs and brands
http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.aspx?catid=31&threadid=1734570&enterthread=y

George: You're talking about Pinaccle/Avid Liquid right? You're right in that it does take advantage of a fast video card.

Not all editors do though, and the recommended specs will bear that out.

I remember switching from MX4400 with 64MB to GeForce 5200 with 128MB. It made a lot of difference on how video is played in both Adobe and Avid apps. I believe anything that works on Win platform would benefit from faster videocard and more video RAM. If you look around more than just looking at Dell or HP you can find laptops with good videocards and wouldn't have to sacrifice system RAM or videocard. Also it's usually an easy upgrade from 512 RAM to 1GB but it's harder if not impossible to upgrade you videocard in a laptop. You can even upgrade you CPU fairly easy on a laptop so if the money is an issue I would chouse to sacrifice 1. System RAM - cheapest and easiest upgrade 2. Hard Disk - you will probably end up using external hard drives anyway. 3. CPU - you will probably loose some money on the upgrade but you can still do it.

Glenn, You mention the lack of good benchmark data. I have developed a Premiere Pro benchmark that I call PPBM+. It is at http://mysite.verizon.net/wgehrke/ppbm/. With this benchmark I have done a lot of testing on my notebook, a HP zv5000z. I love the notebook for my video editing. It is faster than my current desktop and a lot more convienent than the desktop.

As for results I have tested it with three different speed disk drives and two memory configurations. Shortly after Christmas I will have results from my Christmas present upgraded CPU. With Premiere Pro I test how long it takes to:
1. Render the timeline.
2. Export the timeline to a single AVI file.
3. Export to a high quality MPEG file.

The rendering and exporting to MPEG are the most time consuming operations, and are almost exclusively CPU dependent. The exporting the AVI timeline to a single AVI file is extensively disk dependent. I have data with three different speed disk drives, 4200 rpm, 5400 rpm, and 7200 rpm. While the exporting to AVI is only roughly 15-20% of the time for the other two operations it does show the advantages of the higher speed disk drive. But in the more time consuming processes it makes very little difference, especially between the 5400 and 7200 rpm drives (both 100GB). My conclusions so far are CPU, CPU, CPU!

Incidently, I pulled out one of my 512MB sticks and did not find much difference in performance in a stripped down (single tasking--about 28 processes running and a well defragmented disk system).

Hi Bill,

You're right in that the tasks depend *highly* on the CPU. Where the extra RAM helps is when you would like to multi-task and have many programs open at once... premiere, photoshop, iTunes/music, MPEG2 encoder, web browser (for help and things like that), etc. I often find myself in a situation like that and find that the system can slow down dramatically when the system needs to wait for information not stored in RAM.

But do remember that the OP is using Pinnacle software and that it is Studio 10 (with the Liquid engine). CPU, GPU, CPU ;)

I have never seen an error with drive speed once the video is on the set. The drive speed does matter when you are logging it through a logger that also does playback. It will drop frames. I have to either log on another system, backup, and then load the backup on the laptop, or use Scenalyzer or Studio (no preview) to capture an AVI and then import it (which can take up to 15 minutes for 1 hr).