Notebook Recommendations for Video???

[GMaq]

Hi Y'All
With the advent of USB 2.0 input devices and greatly improved Notebook Hardware & Software I am seriously contemplating stripping my 2 main computer activities (Multi-track Audio, Digital Video) down to 1 Notebook. I would be interested in advice: 1. Is this is even do-able for MPEG-2/4 Video Capture?? 2. Hardware recommendations and success stories from members ie, 5400 RPM HDD vs 7200??

I will be using Windows XP and am quite comfortable with all kinds of Video using Desktops, I already have all the software I need or like, so I just need to brain-pick as things relate to Notebooks. I would appreciate any kicks at the can. Thanks- GMaq

[BJ_M]

Acer Ferrari 4005 -- awesome well built machine

Microsoft® Windows® XP Professional; AMD Turion™ 64 Mobile Technology ML-37; 1GB (512/512) DDR333 SDRAM; 100GB hard drive; integrated DVD-Super Multi double-layer drive; 5-in-1 card reader; 15.4" WSXGA+ (1680 x 1050) TFT display; ATI® MOBILITY™ RADEON® X700 graphics; 802.11b/g WLAN, gigabit LAN, V.92 modem
DC-in
RJ-11 modem
RJ-45 LAN
VGA
DVI-D (digital visual interface-digital)
S-video TV-out
Microphone/line-in
Stereo headphones/speakers/line-out with SPDIF support
FireWire® (IEEE 1394)
FIR (fast infrared)
Four USB 2.0

[BJ_M]

for best value -- you just be hard presed to beat the
Gateway’s 7510GX Notebook PC.

Gateway’s 7510GX Notebook PC.
This lightweight, high-speed Gateway 7510GX laptop is the perfect, portable PC for personal or business use. Built especially for the frequently mobile person who likes to travel light but have plenty of options for work or play. The Gateway Model 7510GX notebook features an AMD Athlon™ 64 3700+ Processor, 1GB of blazing, reliable DDR 333MHz memory, an ample 100GB hard drive and a top-quality DVD +/- RW optical drive. You can count on Gateway for the very best performance in laptop computers. Perfectly priced to fit your budget. The Gateway 7510GX notebook. Order today while supplies last.

Specifications

Operating Systems Microsoft® Windows® XP Home

Platform Learn More Notebook PC

Expansion Ports 1 - Type II PC Card Slot

Processor Brand AMD

Processor Class Athlon™ 64-Bit Processor

Processor Speed 3700+

Additional Technologies HyperTransport™ Technology

Memory Type DDR

Memory Size 1GB (512MB x 2)

Memory Speed DDR333 (PC2700)

Memory Slots (Total) 2 - 1 slot not user-accessible

Memory Slots (Available) 0

Capacity 100GB

Optical Drive Type DVD±RW

Graphics Description Integrated Graphics

GPU/VPU ATI Mobility Radeon X600 (PCI Express)

Video Memory 64MB

Communications Description Integrated Modem
Integrated LAN
Integrated Wireless LAN

Interface Type 802.11g Wireless Networking
RJ-11 Phone Connector
RJ-45 Ethernet Connector

Width 14.0"

Height 1.6"

Depth 10.4"

Weight 7.5 lbs

Display Type TFT active-matrix LCD display

Viewable Screen Size 15"

[GMaq]

Thanks BJ_M !!

I appreciate your time, I don't want to start an AMD/Intel flame-fest but are the new AMDs giving anything at all away performance- wise compared to the Intel Duo Dual Core?? AMD has been at the dual-Core thing a little longer that's for sure.

[BJ_M]

http://www.eet.com/news/latest/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=180203983

[TBoneit]

OTOH upgrading the Notebook will be more expensive.... You'll need external drives when the internal becomes to small or a bottleneck, Most notebook drives are slower than desktop drives.


having said that overbuy when you buy as it isn't easy to upgrade some things like video and display.

Some of the new whitebox notebooks feature changeable video cards but they are special format and hard to find vs desktop video cards and displays can not be ubgraded as far as I know.

Cheers

[GMaq]

T Bone It,
Good points, My philosophy has always been "You can do things cheap or you can do things right but you can rarely do both at the same time". Anyone out there running the Plextor USB PVR thingie with the "Hardware Divx Encoder" with a notebook???

[dipstick]

GMaq wrote:

My philosophy has always been "You can do things cheap or you can do things right but you can rarely do both at the same time".

I don't know, I'm pretty happy with mine. It's a Compaq and it's got a AMD 64 Athlon 3200, 1 GIG of RAM , 128 MB ATI Radeon, Dual-layer Burner, MultiCard reader, Firewire, 3 USB 2.0 ports, and 15.4" Widescreen. All for a cool $650 US. On sale about 7 months ago.

Sure it's only got a 40 GIG HDD, but External HDD enclosures and 200 GIG HDDs are pretty cheap. They work fantastic either in USB 2.0 or Firewire mode. Though Firewire is faster, either one works great for video.

[edDV]

You need to think through what you need to do.

For a notebook, you are locked into a single drive and display decoding built into that machine. Full MPeg4 hardware decoding (VC1 and H.264) is not yet available to my knowledge in a notebook so you are obsolete going in. HDCP support is not available so you will never be able to play a HD/BD DVD or watch a blocked broadcast in HD.

On the capture side, you will be able to buy external tuners and hardware encoders but they will always be more expensive than internal models.

Software encoding (compression) makes a notebook run hot. Hardware encoders may not be available in PC card packaging.

Notebooks lack flexibility and go obsolete quickly.

[GMaq]

edDV
Thanks for your input, the only way to make an informed decision is to look at all the options Pro's and Con's. I do a lot of computer video editing and encoding but very little movie watching on my computer so I don't know if the HD issue will be a problem, So far I'm pretty unimpressed with AVC and I view MPEG-4 as a great tool for casual movie watching and portable devices on which the quality differences between AVC and MPEG-4 are almost indiscernable and the file size difference negligible. If you have a 60 Gig iPod who cares if a 2 hour movie is 685 or 710 Mb, theres no set disc size to worry about! -Sorry I digress. One thing is certain though the new waves of technology are only going to roll in faster and faster. I'm under no illusions that even a high end laptop will be lucky to be useful for much more than 2 years.

[edDV]

edDV
Thanks for your input, the only way to make an informed decision is to look at all the options Pro's and Con's. I do a lot of computer video editing and encoding but very little movie watching on my computer so I don't know if the HD issue will be a problem, So far I'm pretty unimpressed with AVC and I view MPEG-4 as a great tool for casual movie watching and portable devices on which the quality differences between AVC and MPEG-4 are almost indiscernable and the file size difference negligible. If you have a 60 Gig iPod who cares if a 2 hour movie is 685 or 710 Mb, theres no set disc size to worry about! -Sorry I digress. One thing is certain though the new waves of technology are only going to roll in faster and faster. I'm under no illusions that even a high end laptop will be lucky to be useful for much more than 2 years.

What are you editing? Notebooks are OK for portability but I'd hate to have that as the only option.

Over time MPeg4 AVC will replace MPeg2 for DBS, Cable, DVD and DTV.

The secret will be hardware decoding for playback and hardware encoding for home PVR and archive. All this will happen first on PCI cards and last on PC cards. On a 2 year horizon this may not be critical.

[TBoneit]

edDV, I had forgotten that encoding on a notebook problem, I tried it on mine and the fans ran constantly blowing hot air, The whole notebook ran noticeably hotter which can not be good for long life. The fans running constantly will of course shorten the fan life and they are special to each make/model. We had to order a fan/heatsink assembly for a HP notebook, they would not sell the fan separate, only one of the fans was bad but it was the first stage fan that ran before the larger fan would kick in if more cooling was needed, They did that for battery life as I understand it. Anyway, moving on the cost was over $100 for that puppy dog via one of our other stores that does HP warranty repairs so they got it at wholesale.

So far best notbooks I've seen for lack of hardware problems seem to be Thinkpads (may change since a China company bought them) and Sony, Dells seem Ok.

Dells, HPs, Compaqs and some model of Dell we see lots of problems with the power connector.

And definately steer clear of off brands, battery and parts harder to acquire later on.

Cheers

[GMaq]

edDV,
I usually capture MPEG-2 in whatever resolution best suits the given situation, Edit commercials if needed, and then either author to DVD or convert to MPEG-4 for iPod using Nero Digital. Are you taking into consideration that on a fast notebook ie 2.0 Ghz Dual Core that software encoding will occur at 30fps or faster and encoding will probably take less than 2 hrs, for an average movie. I completely understand that it wouldn't be wise to leave a laptop crunching away at a conversion for 6-8hrs and that they weren't designed for that. So I guess I'd like to know if a couple of hours of software encoding a few times a week will be possible without overtaxing the cooling system.

TBoneit,
Thanks very much for the Brand tips, this is the kind of stuff I need to know, Dell (Canada) has a pretty good promotion right now on their Inspiron 9400, Intel Duo @ 2.0 Ghz, 667 FSB, Gig of RAM, 100 Gig 5400 HDD, If you have any more wisdom on Dells or others I'm all ears.

[edDV]

edDV,

I completely understand that it wouldn't be wise to leave a laptop crunching away at a conversion for 6-8hrs and that they weren't designed for that. So I guess I'd like to know if a couple of hours of software encoding a few times a week will be possible without overtaxing the cooling system.

Since encoding (during software capture or DVD authoring) runs the CPU 100%, the cooling system will be maxed within a few minutes. Encoding is the most demanding application for a CPU cooling system since it runs the CPU flat out for hours. Games tend to stress the CPU only in bursts.

External capture devices with hardware encoding move the heat load outside the notebook. Editing and DVD Authoring will still stress the CPU.

The notebook's cooling performance should be a major concern.

[TBoneit]

Some of the Dell short time promos can cheaper than you could build it if you priced the parts. Example my cost to build the equvelent Desktop as the Dell $399 would $400+

That's why most of the new ones we sell these days are custom built high end computers IE dual core 2 to 4 Gb ram etc.

On heat when I tried it even on a small file the laptop would start blowing really hot air with-in a few minutes. The newer Intels won't generally burnout they'll step down in speed until they are running slow enough to not be nearing an overheat condition as a protective measure.

Bye

[lenti_75]

notebooks are NOT for video.... don't matter if it's ferrari or lamborghini

you better get a $400 dell, as notebook and for the rest of the well expensive notebook get a desktop and this way you have 2 pc's.....and that 1500+ desktop is a FAST beast.....


:P

[BJ_M]

notebooks are NOT for video.... don't matter if it's ferrari or lamborghini

you better get a $400 dell, as notebook and for the rest of the well expensive notebook get a desktop and this way you have 2 pc's.....and that 1500+ desktop is a FAST beast.....


:P

hmm - not TRUE at all ... several feature films have been cut on laptops and the edl sent to larger avid systems ... in fact its quite common these days ..


also several music videos and ads i know about were completely edited on laptops (a s. crow video was done on the ferrari laptop above) ..

rendering can be done on a separate machine in some cases if necessary and with firewire external drives -- space is not an issue ...

[edDV]

Off-Line editing can be done on very slow computers.

Let's just say notebooks are NOT for heavy encoding/transcoding or effects rendering.

[GMaq]

Thanks Everybody,
Looks like we've got quite the variety of opinions which is what I was hoping for. In case anyone still cares I think I'll keep my old faithful Tualatin 1.3Ghz desktop and ATI AIW 128 Pro, it isn't really worth anything to sell anyway, I have a newer desktop that I'm going to move and replace with a Dual Core/7200 RPM HDD Notebook (waiting for the best deal)and see how it goes, I appreciate everyone's time and edDV for shootin' from the hip.

[aanaravs]

notebooks are NOT for video.... don't matter if it's ferrari or lamborghini
:P

Not true. I am a full time notebook user and an editor. I have edited many, many TV shows from the laptop with a couple of firewire drives attached.

Here is an article I wrote a while back (caution: may be outdated already) http://asvideoproductions.com/video/articles/laptops.pdf

[GMaq]

Aanaravs,
Lots of good advice in your article there, perhaps you should consider updating it and posting it as a guide, I'm sure as the larger faster notebooks keep coming more people will be curious and you obviously are doing this at a professional level.

[lenti_75]

it's not IMPOSSIBLE but takes longer. I've been around laptops for a while and a desktop with the same specs is faster...

[GMaq]

Hello,
In case anyone is interested I've been using my new notebook (Dell 9400 Inspiron) for over a month now testing it out for video and so far capturing and encoding has been no problem, the CPU cooling fan does cycle on and off during encoding but there have been no performance issues. The Intel 2.0 Ghz Duo processor is about 15-20% faster than my 3.4Ghz P4 desktop was and the 100 Gig SATA 7200 RPM HDD keeps up with everything I've thrown at it so far. I'm using a Plextor MX402U USB 2.0 hardware encoder for capture and although it comes with crappy InterVideo software, I've found some 3rd party progs that work fine. So far I'm very pleased and don't miss my desktop at all. I just thought I'd follow up in case anyone else was thinking of "going mobile" with their video rig.

[BJ_M]

sounds like a nice rig

[whitejremiah]

it's not nessacerily even that laptops are slower per se, but they are generally a few steps behind desktops technology wise, and desktop parts are generally significantly cheaper, so although this type of thing obviously CAN be done on a laptop, i'd suggest avoiding it if at all possible.....if you need to, though, be prepared to pay out the nose for a decent setup....