HD video editing -- more video memory or faster processor?

[jordy2324]

I'm looking to edit HD videos shot with a Canon T1i.

I know a fast processor is needed for HD videos. I also know you need a lot of video memory.

I found two similar laptops.
They both have:

4GB Ram.
Intel Celeron 2 processor (Core 2 Duo)

Here's where they differ. One has a 2.4 ghz processor and no dedicated video memory (allocated memory only)

The other has a 2.o ghz processor, but 512 MB of DEDICATED memory.

Which is better?

[ocgw]

Is there a reason a desktop is out of the question?

If it is budgetary concerns you could be better served w/ a "bare bones" laptop, and a reasonably capable desktop for a simular outlay

edit: Wait a minute this is "HD" video shot w/ a still camera? go w/ the faster processor

ocgw

peace

[jordy2324]

CORRECTION ***


That should read Centrino, not Celeron.
Don't know what I was thinking.


And I move around too much for a desktop. I need something to edit photo/video on the fly.

Any suggestions?

[ocgw]

CORRECTION ***


That should read Centrino, not Celeron.
Don't know what I was thinking.


And I move around too much for a desktop. I need something to edit photo/video on the fly.

Any suggestions?

Dedicated memory means nothing, does it have a gfx card?

I don't know your budget but this is the minimum I would recommend

Sony Core 2 duo 2.0Ghz cpu 4GB mem 250GB HDD $700USD

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834117872

ocgw

peace

[jordy2324]

I'm not sure what a GFX card is?

I read in a couple of articles that it is best to have at least 256mb of DEDICATED video memory while editing HD video. Is that the case?

[jordy2324]

Just stumbled upon the obvious. Yes, it does have a graphics card. But don't most laptops (at least those priced $700 and up) have a graphics card?

[ocgw]

I'm not sure what a GFX card is?

I read in a couple of articles that it is best to have at least 256mb of DEDICATED video memory while editing HD video. Is that the case?

gfx card = graphics card = video card

Normally "dedicated memory' means on board video memory on a PCI-ex16 gfx card and "shared memory" is system memory set aside for video use

dedicated memory could be "system memory" allocated for video use w/ IG (intergrated graphics =intergrated into the northbridge chipset) it does not difinitively mean a dedicated gfx card

The phrase "dedicated memory" is a term used by Intel to describe a feature that is normally considered "shared memory"

To answer your question NO, a $700USD laptop is definively "low end" and would not normally come w/ dedicated gfx, that is assuming a gaming laptop which is a oximoron in and of itself, most laptops are for business and do not require dedicated gfx, even the ones dedicated to entertainment do not need special gfx hardware

ocgw

peace

[jordy2324]

so a gamin laptop would be best, then?

[MJA]

jordy2324.
whats your budget for the laptop?

if money and size isn't an issue.check the HP Pavilion dv7-2040us .

Intel Core 2 Quad Q9000

ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4650

4GB DDR2

HDMI,Firewire,,,,much more

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834147985

[jordy2324]

My budget is $900 or less.

[ocgw]

so a gamin laptop would be best, then?

You are assuming that a gfx card will help w/ encoding, and it will not, a good gfx card is only really necessary for gaming, get a decent cpu a 7200rpm HDD and plenty of ram

ocgw

peace

[Nelson37]

Well, of the two things you know, one of them is wrong. Sort of.

The video card has nothing to do with editing, what it DOES have something to do with is actually displaying the video. The amount of memory on the card is only of secondary importance, what you really need is a reasonably fast video card to handle HD video. Most on-board graphics cards are simply too weak for this, whatever the amount of memory available. They'll stutter like crazy.

Now, IF you see a laptop with 512 or 1gb of video memory on a dedicated card, the odds are good that the video card is fairly modern and hi-performance and will do the job. Non-dedicated video RAM usually means an on-board video processor, which is usually weak.

So, the Dedicated Video RAM or its' size does not really matter, but it does indicate that you would have a more powerful video card, which is important. However, you Could have a weak card with dedicated RAM, or a powerful processor built-in with shared RAM.

Reasonably powerful cards are starting to be leveraged for encoding, and by some editing programs.

[ocgw]

Well, of the two things you know, one of them is wrong. Sort of.

The video card has nothing to do with editing, what it DOES have something to do with is actually displaying the video. The amount of memory on the card is only of secondary importance, what you really need is a reasonably fast video card to handle HD video. Most on-board graphics cards are simply too weak for this, whatever the amount of memory available. They'll stutter like crazy.

Now, IF you see a laptop with 512 or 1gb of video memory on a dedicated card, the odds are good that the video card is fairly modern and hi-performance and will do the job. Non-dedicated video RAM usually means an on-board video processor, which is usually weak.

So, the Dedicated Video RAM or its' size does not really matter, but it does indicate that you would have a more powerful video card, which is important. However, you Could have a weak card with dedicated RAM, or a powerful processor built-in with shared RAM.

Reasonably powerful cards are starting to be leveraged for encoding, and by some editing programs.

Nelson he is buying a brand new laptop, current IG (intergrated graphics) can play HD material w/ no problem, it is older IG that is problematic

With modern PC's if you are not gaming, running a gfx program, or editing a lot of hi-res pics you do not need a gfx card for anything more than to have the right ports

for example: I use many computers @ work, the 1 am on right now has a Q965/963 Express chipset and a Core 2 duo 6300 1.86Ghz cpu and 1GB of ram w/ no gfx card and it plays 1080p Blu rays @ 1080x1920 from my portable HDD to a 24" wide screen LCD monitor w/ out any problems

for $900USD his new laptop will blow this craptop out the water

ps. remember he is shooting 30 second-5minute clips of 1080p 20fps w/ a Canon Rebel

ocgw

peace

[ocgw]

dbl post

[RabidDog]

Neither of the above .. you really need fast disks eg either raid 0 or better yet SSD. This will have far more impact on editing HD video than either the PROC or gfx card.. tho the GFx card would be next on my list.

[ocgw]

Neither of the above .. you really need fast disks eg either raid 0 or better yet SSD. This will have far more impact on editing HD video than either the PROC or gfx card.. tho the GFx card would be next on my list.

Now provide the link to a $900USD laptop w/ RAID0 or SSD sir

btw I would agree that w/ a larger budget HDD i/o would be the highest priority in no-encoding non-linear editing, especially if we were dealing w/ large files which we are not, but if there is any re-encoding envolved it is all about the cpu

But in what scenario does gfx performance come before cpu processing power in editing video????

ocgw

peace

[MJA]

do they even exist ?

[edDV]

The Canon T1i records video to highly compressed h.264 in a MOV wrapper
640x480 @ 30 fps
1280x720 @ 30 fps
and
1920x1080 @ 20fps.

Look for a graphics display chipset with PureVideoHD or AVIVO-HD acceleration spec.

Check Canon T1i forums to find edit software that is working. 30p will look jerky on a big screen. 20p will be worse.

See NVIDIA chipsets here
http://www.nvidia.com/object/geforce_m_series.html

Look for GeForce 9100M G mGPU or better for accelerated HD display.
http://www.nvidia.com/object/product_geforce_9100m_g_mgpu_us.html

[JimmyS]

do they even exist ?

I was just perusing the HP laptop site a couple of days ago, and saw several models (usually 17 in. screen size and larger) that had two hard drives as an option.

http://www.shopping.hp.com/webapp/shopping/computer_can_series.do?storeName=computer_s...me=dv7t_series

Click the Specs tab and you will see several dual hard drive options of varying capacities. I ran the configuration on the base specs of this model with the only option being two 250 Gig. SATA drives. Price was $900 after a 150$ rebate. Or, buy it w. one 250 Gig. H.D. for $800 and add your own 2nd drive. I'm sure there are other vendors with similar configurations.

I did not look at driver options for this PC at their support site, so I don't know if there is a raid 0 driver for it.

[ocgw]

do they even exist ?

I was just perusing the HP laptop site a couple of days ago, and saw several models (usually 17 in. screen size and larger) that had two hard drives as an option.

http://www.shopping.hp.com/webapp/shopping/computer_can_series.do?storeName=computer_s...me=dv7t_series

Click the Specs tab and you will see several dual hard drive options of varying capacities. I ran the configuration on the base specs of this model with the only option being two 250 Gig. SATA drives. Price was $900 after a 150$ rebate. Or, buy it w. one 250 Gig. H.D. for $800 and add your own 2nd drive. I'm sure there are other vendors with similar configurations.

I did not look at driver options for this PC at their support site, so I don't know if there is a raid 0 driver for it.

That is absolutely NOT a RAID laptop

pcgw

peace

[ocgw]

The Canon T1i records video to highly compressed h.264 in a MOV wrapper
640x480 @ 30 fps
1280x720 @ 30 fps
and
1920x1080 @ 20fps.

Look for a graphics display chipset with PureVideoHD or AVIVO-HD acceleration spec.

Check Canon T1i forums to find edit software that is working. 30p will look jerky on a big screen. 20p will be worse.

See NVIDIA chipsets here
http://www.nvidia.com/object/geforce_m_series.html

Look for GeForce 9100M G mGPU or better for accelerated HD display.
http://www.nvidia.com/object/product_geforce_9100m_g_mgpu_us.html

Good advice on the gpu chips, and i agree that 20fps is jerky, I have a mp4 player that is rated for 18fps that I have "overclocked" to 20fps and it is still jerky

however w/ a lot of blu rays @ 24fps I don't see what the problem would be w/ any 30fps progressive scan video

btw I have a Canon DSLR, they come w/ all the software you will ever need for them, no forum scrounging necessary

ocgw

peace

[JimmyS]

do they even exist ?

I was just perusing the HP laptop site a couple of days ago, and saw several models (usually 17 in. screen size and larger) that had two hard drives as an option.

http://www.shopping.hp.com/webapp/shopping/computer_can_series.do?storeName=computer_s...me=dv7t_series

Click the Specs tab and you will see several dual hard drive options of varying capacities. I ran the configuration on the base specs of this model with the only option being two 250 Gig. SATA drives. Price was $900 after a 150$ rebate. Or, buy it w. one 250 Gig. H.D. for $800 and add your own 2nd drive. I'm sure there are other vendors with similar configurations.

I did not look at driver options for this PC at their support site, so I don't know if there is a raid 0 driver for it.

That is absolutely NOT a RAID laptop

pcgw

peace

Just went to HP support site for this model. It said there is a BIOS setting to enable raid configuration.

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?docname=c01425350&cc=us&lc=en&dlc=en&product=3744254

[ocgw]

do they even exist ?

I was just perusing the HP laptop site a couple of days ago, and saw several models (usually 17 in. screen size and larger) that had two hard drives as an option.

http://www.shopping.hp.com/webapp/shopping/computer_can_series.do?storeName=computer_s...me=dv7t_series

Click the Specs tab and you will see several dual hard drive options of varying capacities. I ran the configuration on the base specs of this model with the only option being two 250 Gig. SATA drives. Price was $900 after a 150$ rebate. Or, buy it w. one 250 Gig. H.D. for $800 and add your own 2nd drive. I'm sure there are other vendors with similar configurations.

I did not look at driver options for this PC at their support site, so I don't know if there is a raid 0 driver for it.

That is absolutely NOT a RAID laptop

pcgw

peace

Just went to HP support site for this model. It said there is a BIOS setting to enable raid configuration.

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?docname=c01425350&cc=us&lc=en&dlc=en&product=3744254

Dude, listen to yourself, you are suggesting spending money on software RAID on a laptop as a better solution to a more powerful processor for video editing

good luck w/ that design philosphy

btw your 2nd link just shows a page explaining RAID, it says nothing about that laptop being RAID, and your 1st link does not mention RAID whatsoever

ocgw

peace

[edDV]

RAID isn't necessary for 8Mb/s H.264 playback. A typical notebook drive can handle >200Mb/s no problem.

What problem are you trying to solve with RAID? Very few notebooks have two drives.

Neither of the above .. you really need fast disks eg either raid 0 or better yet SSD. This will have far more impact on editing HD video than either the PROC or gfx card.. tho the GFx card would be next on my list.

Absolutely false unless you are dealing with uncompressed HD video. For that you need 4-6 disks in RAID.

Typical HD bit rates

h.264 8-16 Mb/s
MPeg2 TS (ATSC) 10-19 Mb/s
Blu-Ray 8-35Mb/s

None of these are more than a walk for a single notebook drive. All the load falls to the CPU or hardware MPeg decoder.


PS: This assumes you aren't monitoring the capture. Monitoring requires realtime decode which is CPU intensive.

[JimmyS]

[quote="ocgw"][quote="JimmyS"][quote="ocgw"][quote="JimmyS"]

do they even exist ?

NO, this is what I was answering. It is a laptop and it has raid capability. I'm not condoning it for anything else. If you had bothered to read the whole support page referenced above, you would have seen this:


Does HP recommend using a RAID array?
Some HP notebook PCs have multiple hard disk, however they are configured as a single drive. For the majority of the home and small business notebook computers, HP does not encourage or support the use of a RAID array.
For a business that has a specific need for RAID, there is a BIOS setting, enable RAID , that allows the computer to be reconfigured. Unless you have the specific technical knowledge, attempting to set up a RAID array may cause problems and is not recommended.

[ocgw]

[quote="JimmyS"][quote="ocgw"][quote="JimmyS"][quote="ocgw"]

do they even exist ?

NO, this is what I was answering. It is a laptop and it has raid capability. I'm not condoning it for anything else. If you had bothered to read the whole support page referenced above, you would have seen this:


Does HP recommend using a RAID array?
Some HP notebook PCs have multiple hard disk, however they are configured as a single drive. For the majority of the home and small business notebook computers, HP does not encourage or support the use of a RAID array.
For a business that has a specific need for RAID, there is a BIOS setting, enable RAID , that allows the computer to be reconfigured. Unless you have the specific technical knowledge, attempting to set up a RAID array may cause problems and is not recommended.

Did you bother to read your own post?

Where in that paragraph does it say that specific model laptop has RAID capability?

besides the fact that software RAID is rubbish, ESPECIALLY on a laptop, RAID1 might makes sense in some business applications, but software RAID0 for video editing on a laptop as opposed to a more powerful cpu lol, have you ever done RAID, or video editing?

I have raptors I run in software RAID and 15K SAS I run in hardware RAID and benched them @ different cluster and stripe sizes

I edit and reencode video w/ a 3.8Ghz quad cpu and my high density storage drives are not a limiting factor

He is with out a doubt going to be cpu limited (aka "bottleneck") no matter what cpu he buys so he might as well buy the best cpu he can afford

ocgw

peace

[edDV]

RAID isn't addressing the OP's problem.

[ocgw]

RAID isn't addressing the OP's problem.

agreed

ocgw

peace

[RabidDog]

He did say editing HD video ... editing is a hands-on task, encoding/transcoding can be left to run overnite or all weekend. So speed in the editing part will be most felt. possibly not raid but certainly a fast hard disk 7200 rather than 5400 or even 4200, with loads of ram 4gb

[ocgw]

He did say editing HD video ... editing is a hands-on task, encoding/transcoding can be left to run overnite or all weekend. So speed in the editing part will be most felt. possibly not raid but certainly a fast hard disk 7200 rather than 5400 or even 4200, with loads of ram 4gb

of course he should get a 7200rpm HDD, that's just common sense, but I would not waste valuable resources chasing the small benefits of software RAID when i could have a much more powerful cpu if I had his budget for a laptop

Actually if I had 2 drives in a laptop I wouldn't run RAID0, anything you do would be reading and writing to the same array, you may be better off leaving the 2 drives separate and reading from 1 drive and writing to the other better i/o capability

RAID0 is great for loading large maps into memory in games, but in a editing rig if you don't have 2 RAID0 arrays to write from 1 to the other you may be better off writing from 1 individual drive to another

I have run software RAID0 rigs, hardware RAID0 rigs, and dual RAID0 array rigs, trust me it is much better to transfer from 1 drive to another than to have 1 RAID0 array reading and writing to it's self

ocgw

peace