laptop upgrade for encoding. help!

[buraku]

I will be upgrading my laptop soon to enable faster encoding of video. The types of things I do most often are:

Encoding mpg to xvid (for playback on dvp642 and to save space on dvds)
Re-encoding vids to remove qpel and gmc and to embed subtitles.
Exporting vbr to wav.
Re-encoding avi and other formats to mpeg-2.
Ripping dvds and encoding vob to avi and ac3 to mp3.

The tools I use most often:
vdub, tmpeg, vdub mod, all codecs, nandub, dvdshrink, dvdx, nero, dvd decrypter.

I use currently an s250 toshiba satellite with 60gb HD (unfortunately only 4200 rpm), 512kb ram (256 per slot), P4-M 2.8 GHZ, RW dvd drive, and an acom data 80gb external HD at 7200 rpm connected via usb 2.0.

I would like to know what upgrades will improve my encoding performance. I am think about upgrading to 2 pc2700 1gb sticks of ram (so freaking expensive though). Will this make a difference?

Also, would it be faster to encode from and to my external HD since it's faster than my internal, even though I have to pass through a usb 2.0 connection first, and would reformatting the external drive from fat32 to ntfs improve my performance?

Would switching to a firewire external HD be any better than usb 2.0?

And, are there any OS modifications I can try too that may speed things up? I am currently using xp.

Thanks in advance for taking the time to read this.

rip suprnova

[VideoTechMan]

Upgrading a laptop can be more difficult because the internal parts are more intergrated. The encoding is usually a processor-intense task so depending if your processor in the laptop is upgradable, then you could possibly be able to upgrade it. Hard drives dont have much to do with encoding. Upgrading the memory to 1GB RAM is not going to hasten the encoding process.....it involves mainly the processor.

VTM

[redwudz]

I would agree with VideoTechMan.

Probably the biggest improvement, at least in convenience, would be to add an external harddrive. If your laptop doesn't have a Firewire input, PCMCIA Firewire cards are reasonable enough. Firewire generally works better than USB2.0. There is also a Firewire 800 speed now, but I don't know if there is a laptop card for this newer format. Two drives always helps with video work, even if one is in the laptop.

[buraku]

Upgrading a laptop can be more difficult because the internal parts are more intergrated. The encoding is usually a processor-intense task so depending if your processor in the laptop is upgradable, then you could possibly be able to upgrade it. Hard drives dont have much to do with encoding. Upgrading the memory to 1GB RAM is not going to hasten the encoding process.....it involves mainly the processor.

VTM

yeah, i was afraid of that. i was hoping an increase in ram would increase my speed, but i've read in other forums that the processor is the biggest factor and i don't plan to mess with that.

the reason i was inquiring about the HD is because i've heard that part of the amount of time spent encoding is data being read from and written to the HD, so i thought maybe an upgrade there would work.

redwudz, i use an acom 80gb external also, but it is usb only and runs at 7200. i've thought about getting an external enclosure for a western digital internal raptor running at 10000 and connecting via firewire and using that drive to read from and write to when encoding. would this make any difference?

also, off topic, would i see an increase in performance as far as speed, not necessarily with encoding, if i were to reformat my acom 80gb from fat32 to ntfs?

thanks for the help

[redwudz]

Here's some Firewire 800 components. The FW 800 seems fast enough for video work, although a little pricey.

http://www.macpower.com/Category.cfm?catid=322&AZX=

and

http://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?pid=10482

Just a guess, but the Raptor may be too fast for an external interface, I don't really know.

As far as speed between Fat 32 and NTFS, I don't think there is much difference. NTFS has better data handling and security, but speed?

Here is one comparison: http://www.ntfs.com/ntfs_vs_fat.htm

[buraku]

thanks for the replies. seems like i'm just stuck then unless i get a new faster comp.