Digital Video and editing on a laptop

[Chuck Antinoro]

I am strongly considering replacing my OLD PII PC with a P4 laptop, and also getting into digital video. I currently only do analog. I know I can get a more powerful desktop at a cheaper price, but like the idea of laptop portability. The lap top I am contemplating is a P4 2.8 GHZ 512 Ram 80 GB HD (4200 RPM) with firewire. My question is will this be OK for imprting and editing digital video? I'm leary because I've heard you want 7200RPM drives or higher, but didn't know if that applied to digital video via firewire. Any help or advice is appreciated.

[guns1inger]

4200 is fine for DV. I have worked with laptops for many years, including editing and DV work. While they are fine for working on the road, there are certain advantages to desktops that laptops can't match.

1. Memory. I would suggest 768MB - 1GB is better than 512MB. Windows XP will eat half of that on boot up, which doesn't leave you much room to play in. Can your laptop take 1 GB ? and can you afford it ?

2. Multiple HDD. Editing, rendering and encoding are very CPU and disk intensive exercises. Lots of data being read and written. Being able to read from one disk while writing to another can speed things up signifcantly. I have three HDD's in my current machine so I can do all of this independently of the system drive.

3. GFX. While laptops are getting better, they still can compete in video area. LCD's cannot give you true colour representation, so colour correction/matching is out. LCDs in laptops generally aren't fast enough to give you good presentation of video if it contains action.

4. Upgradability. Need more grunt - put in a new CPU. Oh, you can't do that without replacing the motherboard ? Damn. You could have done it with a desktop.

This isn't to say it can't be done - it can. But unless you want to pay for a top of the line Apple with Final Cut Pro, then a laptop should be considered as a secondary machine for working on the road, not as a primary editing box.

[lightspeed]

Hello,

I use a similar set up, P4, 2.8 Ghz, 60 hd. I use WinDV (firewire to cam), Tmpg, and Tmpg DVD Author to make home movies. No problems.

[ofbarea]

You can always get an external firewire drive if your internal one is getting full or is too slow. If you ever get an external drive do not get an USB2 because it will require higher CPU utilization and with laptops this is a limited resource.