any advice

[infected_mushroom]

Hello,

I've been doing some video-editing for fun the last few years. I use either a DV camera or my ATI ALL IN WONDER card to capture analog video to my PC and then edit it in Adobe Premiere.
My Pc is good enough, I only use SATA hard disks.



I now have to help somebody choose a new PC because he wants to do some video editing as well.

His first wish was a laptop because then he can also take his system with him for stuff not video-related.
I kind of said not to go for a laptop to do any video-editing related work simply because a laptop has too slow hard disk and he would get constant "DROPPED FRAMES".

Instead I advise him to go with a plain DESKTOP config but a dual core CPU, 1 to 2 GB of RAM, and a few SATA hard disk. not to forget a new ALL IN WONDER ATI card or something like that.


are my tips way off or do you think I hit the nail right ?


because I see all those fancy Video Capture Card USB devices, (like ADS Pyro AV Link API555, Canopus ADVC-110 and so on and so on....)
would these cards be sufficient ? ??? would they do well attached to a LAPTOP ?


any suggestions or comments of what I have said are MORE than welcome...



ps: I hope I posted this in the right forum


regards,

[kyemeng]

Well, my advice would be similar to yours. Get a desktop with a dual core. That would be an awesome rig for film editing. In my opinion, a laptop just does not cut it for video editing. The dual core would eat it alive.

However, if he requires portability, then a laptop is the only choice, I guess. Your friend really needs to decide what his piorities are, before deciding.

[infected_mushroom]

thank you for your reply.

That's exactly what I told him too. Since I don't know anything about those external capture card devices I can't really give him any advices on attaching one of those to a laptop for instance.

I imagine these devices have some kind of buffer that will limit dropped frames but maybe even then, these devices won't do well on a Laptop.


if he goes for a desktop I'd prefer a card like the All in wonder series. I use it and I love it.

but then again I've never used any external USB2.0/FIREWARE devices to capture....

[redwudz]

You could use a laptop with a external Firewire device, like the ADVC-100 with good results. I would stay away from external USB devices, Firewire
is much more dependable.

As for the editing end, you would need a laptop with a large hard drive and a fast CPU. You would also want a second external hard drive. The cost for all that would be close to twice what a equivalent desktop system would be. And a laptop is really not configurable or expandable except by using external devices.

On the other hand, a desktop, even with a 2Ghz CPU and 2 SATA drives would probably run circles around it as far as speed and versatility. If you wanted a semi compact system, how about a micro-ATX motherboard in a portable case, similar to what they use at a LAN party. Some are in the form of a cube with a carrying handle on top. With a 15" LCD monitor, it's still very portable. There's enough room for 2 hard drives and 2 optical drives.