I'm trying to figure out is if there are PC laptop solutions out there that will produce good performance with AspectHD. The performance specs on the Cineform site are primarily for desktop PCs, and the laptops have quite different CPUs, hard drives and memory configurations.

While I assume the new mobile dual core solutions are the best option, I was wondering if there were particular models or hard drive solutions that were recommended... Even better would be a laptop with an analog HD input so I could build an uncompressed/ProspectHD system... with my FX1, but I bet that's pushing it and would cost more than I'm willing to spend.

-Steve

The new dual core laptops are excellent, and will out perform many single core desktop P4/Althons. Disk speed is a your primary issue, fortunately there are integrators that build laptops with RAIDs -- look of one of those if you want to do a lot of multi-stream editing with a laptop.

As for component input to a laptop, when one exist we can't wait to enable that feature. Please keep an eye out for that tech.

Disk speed is a your primary issue, fortunately there are integrators that build laptops with RAIDs
Ah... I suspected that disk speed would be the main problem. I haven't seen a laptop with a RAID drive (0 or otherwise)... any specific companies you can think of?

-Steve

1Beyond, BOXX, Alienware all had RAID 0 laptops for post-production.

How about to add Xena card for laptop with ExpressCard to PCI Expansion kit:
http://www.mobl.com/expansion/products/expresscard_expansion/index.html

David, ExpressCard with HDSDI input exist?

ExpressCard with HDSDI input exist?

Not that I know of, but we want one.

What min. dual core cpu need to ingest 720p24 8bit? Using Prospect HD i can
choose between 8 or 10 bit ?

Yes, Prospect HD is user controllable for 8 and 10bit captures.

What min. dual core cpu need to ingest 720p24 8bit? Using Prospect HD i can
choose between 8 or 10 bit ?

Serge,

If you're using the multithreaded DirectShow encoder (ie ProspectHD, or your own DirectShow-based capture tool talking to CineForm Encoder-2), I reckon that even the lowliest 1.66GHz Core Duo should be able to handle 720p at 24fps.

I'm looking for a rock solid 720p/60 laptop capture platform, but I'm fairly sure I'll have to wait until the 2.3GHz Core Duo makes an appearance.

How about to add Xena card for laptop with ExpressCard to PCI Expansion kit:
http://www.mobl.com/expansion/products/expresscard_expansion/index.html

David, ExpressCard with HDSDI input exist?

Yes this set-up looks intriguing, but Magma are not a very communicative company and I've had no information from them about this when this product might appear.

If the Xena HL works OK on a 32-bit/33MHz PCI slot, surely it would also work OK on the CardBus to PCI product which is available now? 720p/24 at 4:4:4 should be attainable assuming that CardBus has the same level of bandwidth as a normal PCI slot.

Richard, thank you very much for explaining.
Your information about CPU's benchmarks very useful.
This info was a Top Secret of Cineform:)
Now i wish less expensive than PHD a 8 bit only codec for ingesting video.
And i prefer Vegas+DeckLink and CPU Intel over PPro+Xena with AMD Opteron;)

Can your Decklink card work with VirtualDub? This page (http://www.decklink.com/products/hd/driver/) seems to indicate it would work as Decklink has what looks like a WDM driver.

If so, and if you are going to work at 720p/24, I'd seriously consider AspectHD's VFW codec as your 8-bit capture solution. The new 4.0 upgrade gives you access to the high quality setting within the VFW environment, and allows you to switch between interlaced and progressive encoding.

IMHO it's worth the $499 on its own, and I think it's the unsung hero of the Aspect 4.0 upgrade vs 3.4.

There's a strong chance that the top-end single core Pentium M would be fast enough to capture at 24fps too, which may be the preferable solution as the VFW codec is single-threaded so your dual core chip would only yield dividends in the editing environment.

HD Portable Laptop station
http://www.kinor.ru/products/diskvtr/hdnb/

While we're back on the subject of laptops I've been using a Sony AR190 laptop for a few weeks.

It's configured as

T2600 CPU (2.16GHz Core Duo)
2GB RAM
200GB RAID 0 (dual 5400 rpm laptop drives)
WUXGA (1920 x 1200) display

This is the first time I've been able to comfortably edit two 1920 x 1080 streams plus a transition, title, and color correction on a laptop without dropping a frame. It's the combination of the T2600 for horsepower plus the RAID 0 drive config which allows feeding of the two streams simultaneously. Nice, very nice. For those that need an awesome editing laptop on the road the AR190 is awesome. (I think the AR170 is virtually the same).

The new Intel Merom processors around the corner turn up the clocks speed and memory performance another notch, so I think we'll begin to see a new class of laptops capable of this performance.

Steve/Everyone,

I now use an external eSata solution from Thecus:

http://tomshardware.co.uk/2006/04/17/thecus_brings_sata_to_external_storage_uk/

I configured two 250Gig Sata disks in RAID 0 for 500Gigs (there is a small RAID0/RAID1 switch on the back -everything else is automatigically configured).

Here are the transfer speeds:

http://tomshardware.co.uk/2006/04/17/thecus_brings_sata_to_external_storage_uk/page9.html

-plenty fast enough for HD.

-I use USB2 at present in my laptop while away and at home on the PC. When I upgrade to eSata PC motherboard I can plug it into that and double the speed...


Nick.

P.S. I don't work for Thecus I just think it's a great product!

The two Sata disks are Hitachi Sata150 7200rpms btw.

Nothing to stop you putting in a couple of 10k Raptor units in though, Mmmm, now that's a thought....!

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/ProductInfo.asp?WebProductID=346043


Nick.

Vydeo's patent-pending Express Lane design is an ExpressCard 34mm
form factor module that supports import and export of SD, SD-SDI,
HD and HD-SDI video data streams from cameras and decks to
a laptop computer's PCI Express Card slot. (http://www.vydeo.com/products/EC34.html)

http://www.vydeo.com/products/EC34.html

Well, now that the Core 2 Duos have arrived I'm seriously looking at my options... and I've come across two that will do what I'm hoping for.

One is the Alienware Area-51 m5750 outfitted with:
Core 2 Duo T7200
2 GB of RAM
200 GB 7200 rpm RAID 0

The other is the Toshiba Qosmio G35 with similar specs and an HD-DVD drive.

I've been looking about online and have run across quite a number of dissatisfied Alienware customers, and am a little concerned about buying a laptop from them. People seem either to be happy or morbidly disatisfied. In terms of pricing the Alienware is only marginally better... However I live in Canada and for any service it would have to be shipped to and from Florida, which is pretty ridiculous.

Anyone have thoughts or recommendations on either system? I'm getting tempted to just abandon the notion of RAID in a laptop altogether, except that I anticpate the laptop to be more powerful than my desktop (2.8 GHz P4, 1 GB RAM, 500 GB RAID 0), which doesn't really edit my Cineform HDV particularly smoothly. I either do a lot of flopping between systems, or get one that does it all.

-Steve

Steven,

If you intend to make the laptop your primary editing machine I'd recommend a RAID 0 internally. Another solution is to use an external drive - Firewire 800 preferred - for your media store.

I've recently been using a Sony AR190 with a T2600 processor and a 160GB RAID0. It does a great job on two streams of 10-bit 1920 x 1080 with Prospect HD. Drive stuttering begins at three streams. Aspect HD files are slightly smaller horizontally so you may get three streams at times depending on what other effects you have applied.

In quick summary, laptops now have adequate CPUs for (at least) two streams of RT editing, even with Prospect HD, but you need to choose a proper media storage configuration to feed the CPUs.

Well, I have officially abandoned my search for internal RAID hard disks on a laptop under the jurisdiction of being too pricey.

However, I have just run into a different option, and I was curious as to what you guys thought the performance would be like if I used an ExpressCard RAID controller and the eSATA format. Something like this fellow here:

http://www.siig.com/product.asp?pid=1037&catid=128

with an enclosure:

http://www.cooldrives.com/saiidudrmien.html

And a couple of oomphy SATA II drives like these?

http://www.canadacomputers.com/index.php?do=ShowProduct&cmd=pd&pid=007311&cid=HD.96

-Steve

Those devices should work fine.

Steve,

This seems like a great solution. While we haven't tested it specifically, I'll be it does an excellent job. If you go this way let us know the results you see.

I have another question...

What exactly is the advantage of something like RAID 0 compared to say 2 discrete hard drives with the files distributed over them?

For example, if I'm editing a project with shots: A, B, C, and D. And I put shots A and C on one drive and shots B and D on another, couldn't the computer access those 4 files more rapidly in this configuration than in the stripe? Sure the read time on a single shot would be higher on RAID 0, but the seek times would be a lot faster on the other configuration...

What is the main limitation?

-Steve

Just a fyi after some research on expresscard/34:

MBPro Compatible: Vydeo esata, Firmtek Seritek esata, Nitro 1394

not MBPro Compatible: SIIG, Sabrent

If anyone has more info on this please post your experiences.

Well, I've got a laptop now... It's a:

Dell Inspiron 9400
Intel Core 2 Duo T7400 2.16 Ghz
2 GB DDR2-667 RAM
1920x1200 UXGA 17" display
120 GB SATA 5400 rpm primary hard drive
256 MB GeForce Go 7900 GS
SIIG eSATA II ExpressCard RAID
2x 250 GB 7200 rpm SATA Western Digital drives

I haven't set up the RAID yet... I've spent most of my time cleaning up excess Dell crud. Now that it's all cleaned up and defragged N times, the machine is already faster than my previous desktop (a Pentium 4 2.8 GHz based machine). All Cineform files play perfectly off of the 5400 rpm main drive... and it's awesome to be able to playback my footage at full resolution with no scaling.

I'll come back and report on the RAID configuration once it goes. It's certainly seems like a better option for those interested in laptop editing who don't mind lugging a bit of stuff around... and you get much higher performance hard drives than notebooks support.

-Steve

Steve, sounds like a great machine! I think that machine will do an awesome job for you. Amazing how fast these laptops are these days. First with Yonah (T2xxx) series processors and now with Merom (T7xxx) series processors you can easily do multi-stream editing on 1920 x 1080 source footage. The CPU/memory combo gets you the arithmetic, but your RAID will give you the sustained bandwidth.

My Sony AR190 Vaio with T2600 (2.16GHz Yonah) is awesome because it has an internal RAID allowing multi-stream performance, although the RAID is somewhat small in size.

You external RAID will be much more functional in an editing environment.

Yes, please do follow up on your final RAID configuration and the performance you see.

David.

Well, the RAID drive works like a charm. Playback of Cineform files off the hard drive in external applications like media player has never been better... I'm pretty sure my old system was CPU and memory limited.

In my main project I am still not getting continuous playback on the Premiere Timeline... (I'm running Aspect 3.4.0.43d). I haven't been able to figure out why though. There are a lot of edits, but no effects at all (I removed them to see if playback would improve).

This is what the timeline looks like:
http://phispace.net/spiffyprod/Eclipse/screenshot.png

The playback is fine for a while, and then it just stops. Watching the system performance one can see the increase in page file usage to ~2 GB, the CPU levels are never maxed out, both cores are piddling along less than 20%. In the processes menu, the CFplayProc.exe takes up about 500 MB of RAM (no more than that) and is responsible for most of the CPU load... And then the video playback just stops on a frame. The RAID drives stop being accessed continually, but the pagefile, CPU loads and RAM allocation to CFPlayProc.exe stay about the same.

Any suggestions?

-Steve