Minimums system requirements for edius 4 (can you use a single processor or laptop)

[Dwight Flynn]

Has anyone used a single Pentium 4 or Athlon (not dual core) processor to try and capture and edit with edius 4? I have with the result being that my HDV jvc cam captures for a few seconds and then stops. And when I try to import HDV clips captured natively using the utility that came with the cam (or other software), edius 4 freezes, or plays for a moment and freezes. I am using an athlon 64 with 1gig ram and a raid 0 system. Not the fastest horse in the race, but since I have seen and read that many of the other NLE’s out there will capture on a lesser system than this, even on a laptop (in intermediary HD), I am shocked at this result (Also edius 3 was able to do so). I am bringing this up because on one of these forums someone said they were able to capture and edit multiple streams and layers on a laptop with edius 4, and I wanted to know if that is really possible in HD (even intermediary HQ) or is it only possible in SD mode. Today the canopus tech confirmed what I have said above, and told me that they believe edius 4 requires a dual processor setup to run properly (not just dual-core). Anyway if others have different experiences do chime in.

[Rusty Rogers]

I use a lowly HP P4 laptop with 133mHz FSB and edit DV easily with v4.1. I'm not to HDV yet, so I'm not much help, but I'd imagine you could capture MPEG then convert to Canopus HQ. Direct capture/conversion to HQ is what seems to kill most systems.

[Dwight Flynn]

Yeah, it’s an option. Though it is disappointing to have Edius, an otherwise good program, not able to do in this version what it was clearly able to do in the last version. Other programs manage to do this without much of a hitch on a reasonably fast one chip system. I am upgrading, but it is disappointing to have not been given adequate heads up on this requirement.

[Rusty Rogers]

I don't know of any NLE that will edit, much less capture full rez HD, then turn around and output to an external monitor without lag and not require some serious horsepower.

I've used Canopus products since before v1.0 without regrets and (now that they're available) I intend to buy the quad-core chip for my board. HQ should be a breeze.

Rusty

[Randy Donato]

Hi Dwight, While it is true you can capture the native .m2t easily in most apps editing is the devil. It is a highly compressed, high bitrate format that has very long groups of pictures(gop)...that spells trouble for any NLE since the decoding of .m2t kills the processor. The canopus solution to editing HDV is to convert the .m2t to the canopus HQ codec which has many benefits (both for speed and quality)over editing .m2t. It is variable bitrate and interframe method of compression that uses an expanded 4:2:2 color space(.m2t is 4:2:0)
As said above all editing apps struggle with .m2t. The trick is getting enough power to capture on the fly to HQ....once you get there even a P4 can edit HQ(don't recommend it but you can). Use Procoder express on your machine now and transcode some of the .m2t you have to Canopus HQ and you will see the difference immediately. As far as laptops go yes a dualcore lap can capture and convert on the fly to HQ and it will do 3 or four layers to the limit of the harddrive throughput. Many are using single dualcores with Edius/HDV/HQ fine. I have a laptop that is dualcore and it does fine and a Woodcrest system that edits HQ like in the days of DV....I did 7 pips without straining the system.
As far as what tech says I can not confirm but I can confirm that Edius with a dualcore using HQ intermediate is working fine. BTW for more info go to the Canopus boards where you can get lots of info http://forum.canopus.com/ubbthreads.php?Cat=