What to upgrade, RAM or HDD?

[Blbr]

Hello,

I'm really sorry if I'm posting this in the wrong section, but I'd really appreciate it if anyone could help me out a bit.
Life happened and I had to switch to a laptop(Acer aspire v nitro 17) from my PC. I used to do some editing and I would like to continue doing so, but I am not very happy with my laptop, I know it's not really good for editing, but I expected more. It's pretty laggy when I do normal 720p editing. I am guessing it's because of the HDD, which is 1TB 2.5 inch 5400rpm HDD. And I've read that it's really terrible for video editing, so I thought maybe I should buy an SSD, I'm leaning towards Samsung 850 evo 500gb SSD. Or maybe I should add more ram, currently I have 8gb, I could upgrade to 16gb.
Or maybe none of that will help? Maybe the issue is the crappy laptop itself, it has a intel Core i7-4720HQ 4/8 2.6GHz/6MB (turbo 3.6GHz) processor and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M 2GB graphics card.

[johns0]

The lag is due to your cpu,getting a ssd might help a bit with more ram but it's not worth it,get a desktop computer to do any hd editing,laptops aren't cut out for it.

[Blbr]

I get that laptops aren't great for editing, but I know people who do edit with laptops and I was just wondering which of the two would help me out the most. I don't do insane editing, just a few plugins here and there. The main issue is selecting the clips in timeline, they are a bit slow and laggy.

[smrpix]

What kind of video are you editing (codec and container?) What editing software are you using? The weak link looks to be the 5400rpm HDD. Your media should really not be on your system drive either, as that can affect access time.

[Blbr]

Thank you for the reply, smrpix. Mostly H.264 and an mp4 container, I use Sony Vegas for quick edits, Adobe After Effects for effects and Adobe Premiere Pro. But going to go over to Adobe Premiere Pro for good, I think. And by system drive you mean my windows partition or the whole HDD? And yeah, I think that my HDD is the issue here, too. But what about effects and plugins, if I use them more intensely, I will probably need more ram, too, right?

[sophisticles]

Hello,

I'm really sorry if I'm posting this in the wrong section, but I'd really appreciate it if anyone could help me out a bit.
Life happened and I had to switch to a laptop(Acer aspire v nitro 17) from my PC. I used to do some editing and I would like to continue doing so, but I am not very happy with my laptop, I know it's not really good for editing, but I expected more. It's pretty laggy when I do normal 720p editing. I am guessing it's because of the HDD, which is 1TB 2.5 inch 5400rpm HDD. And I've read that it's really terrible for video editing, so I thought maybe I should buy an SSD, I'm leaning towards Samsung 850 evo 500gb SSD. Or maybe I should add more ram, currently I have 8gb, I could upgrade to 16gb.
Or maybe none of that will help? Maybe the issue is the crappy laptop itself, it has a intel Core i7-4720HQ 4/8 2.6GHz/6MB (turbo 3.6GHz) processor and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M 2GB graphics card.

That cpu and gpu combo is hardly "crappy".

That hard drive is the culprit, you have a single 5400rpm HDD for reading from and writing to, of course it's going to lag. Many times in video editing the bottleneck is the hard drive, my vote is for the biggest fastest SSD you can afford.

Also, if you can afford to, upgrade the ram as well, check the specs of the laptop and upgrade both speed and quantity of ram, with the apps you use ram also becomes a bottleneck real quick.

[smrpix]

You should use a different physical drive for your media, a partition is basically fictional in this situation because the read heads still have to access the same drive to run the program and access the media.

Vegas is very well written to utilize system resources efficiently. So your issues are the slow HDD combined with long-gop media. The rest of your system is no slouch (as sophisticles noted.) More RAM is always a good idea, but get a second hard drive (USB3 or better) and if necessary use a proxy/relink workflow to make your edits.

[Blbr]

Thank you guys for taking your time to answer my questions.

@sophisticles Thanks, I think I will go for the Samsung 580 evo 500gb SSD, can't afford anything better at the moment. Will probably get another 8gb ram stick, too.

@smrpix So I should make the SSD my system partition and use my old HDD for my media? So for example, my editing footage would be on my HDD and the editing program on SSD?

[smrpix]

@smrpix So I should make the SSD my system partition and use my old HDD for my media? So for example, my editing footage would be on my HDD and the editing program on SSD?

You're still asking a 5400 rpm drive to deliver HD media which we already know it isn't doing. Your least expensive option (IMHO) is to get a 2 or 3 TB external 7200+ rpm USB3 drive. By all means get an SSD for your system drive, you clearly want it, and you will see a speedup in operations, but that should be your second purchase.

[tigerman8u]

I 2nd the USB3 external drive. I got the WD passport usb3 and it works great. Your laptop specs are not crappy. My laptop specs are similar except I upgraded from 8gb to 16 gb of ram. While encoding with Adobe Premiere Pro, if I open task manager, I notice Premiere using more ram with the 16gb than with the 8gb.

[KarMa]

Getting more than the 8GB of RAM you have is not really going to help. I can edit 1080i video pretty quickly in Videoredo on large 5400rpm HDDs, which can do smart stream cuts instead of re-encoding the entire thing. I tend to believe you are actually re-encoding your videos for these edits. Encoding video is very CPU intensive. Which would mean you need to either do stream cuts (assuming your source has simple enough GOPs) or do what you are doing and just get a better CPU.

[johns0]

The only benefit you will get from a ssd is faster copying times and opening programs and windows boot up,it will not make your cpu faster so any rendering and encoding time will be the same.

[Blbr]

@smrpix Thank you, I will try to look for a good external drive then.

@tigerman8u thanks for the recommendation, I will see if the WD passport usb3 is the right choice for me.

@KarMa Yes, I do re-encode my videos for editing. Never heard of stream cutting before, the issue is not the encoding, but the editing in the timeline in general, the choosing of parts to cut in the timeline if that explanation makes any sense, I want as least delay as possible.

@johns0 I am aware that it won't decrease my rendering or encoding time, I simply don't want too much lag when choosing and cutting clips in the timeline, the rest I can deal with ram preview.

[sophisticles]

His complaint was not encoding time or speed, his complaint was that his system was lagging with 720p editing. Lag always points to either an insufficient memory issue or an I/O issue. In his case I would suspect the latter being the culprit and would also upgrade the former just for good measure.

A 4720HQ is not going to get swamped with run of the mill 720p editing.

[poisondeathray]

Also make sure you're not using some energy saving profile or running on batteries. That could also explain laggy , poor performance

[KarMa]

720p should be pretty easy to jump around in. If OP is trying to edit x264 encoded video, with complex GOP structures, then that will take more time to decode a specific frame. Or any large GOP h.264 encoded video. Very CPU demanding.

If OP can seek I-frames only, that would help with seek time since they are self contained frames.

A new hdd would help, just a matter of how much. Also should consider defragging your current hdd.

[SameSelf]

If I were you, I would rip that crappy laptop drive out and slam it repeatedly against a brick wall, faster than you could spell solid state drive. If you follow my advice, please post video!

Seriously, 5400 rpm drives are decade+ old tech from when hdds were power hungry beasts that drained batteries like a 70s era gas guzzler. However, in our uber-modern era, those 5400 rpm drives are power hungry beasts now compared to ssd's. They are like ordering a Big Gulp and drinking it with a stirring straw while ssd's are the Tesla Model S. There are few things I hate more than waiting for a crummy laptop drive while it clicks away like hamsters on a wheel.

The fact that Acer, Dell, and others still foist 5400 rpm drives onto customers in 2015 is one of the reasons tablets are eviscerating the laptop market.

Full disclosure: I hate spinning rust, but laptop drives make my blood boil.

Rant over.

[Blbr]

Thank you for all the tips, guys. It helped me a lot. I decided to go for a second HDD, which is this: http://www.amazon.com/HGST-Travelstar-2-5-Inch-Internal-0J22423/dp/B00B4QESVQ, I wonder if it's good enough? Or do you guys have any better recommendations, because I couldn't find anything better. And I decided to upgrade RAM from 8gb to 16gb. I hope this helps, later I'll get the SSD, too.

[sophisticles]

Thank you for all the tips, guys. It helped me a lot. I decided to go for a second HDD, which is this: http://www.amazon.com/HGST-Travelstar-2-5-Inch-Internal-0J22423/dp/B00B4QESVQ, I wonder if it's good enough? Or do you guys have any better recommendations, because I couldn't find anything better. And I decided to upgrade RAM from 8gb to 16gb. I hope this helps, later I'll get the SSD, too.

Waste of money in my opinion, go SSD or don't upgrade at all.

[hydra3333]

+1 ssd should beat the socks off it. just looked and 1/2 the 7200's storage size for just a few bucks more, if you could live with that in your workflow.

Also ... have you watched task manager while you're editing to see cpu/memory usage ?

[KarMa]

ITT: Everyone forgetting how hard it is to decode h.264 quickly and instead pushing the SDD meme.

So I made these videos to show how hard it is to move around in h.264 compared to a FFV1 video, even though it's ~4x bigger. On a 5400rpm HDD.

H.264 - 5GB - 5400rpm - 1080i - Seeking only I frames
https://youtu.be/U4_pU0m9cak

FFV1 - 18GB - 5400rpm - 480p (It's even faster in real life when I'm not capturing @30fps with some duplicate frames in my caputure)
https://youtu.be/s1jj3pLLv1w

[poisondeathray]

ITT: Everyone forgetting how hard it is to decode h.264 quickly and instead pushing the SDD meme.

So I made these videos to show how hard it is to move around in h.264 compared to a FFV1 video, even though it's ~4x bigger. On a 5400rpm HDD.

H.264 - 5GB - 5400rpm - 1080i - Seeking only I frames
https://youtu.be/U4_pU0m9cak

FFV1 - 18GB - 5400rpm - 480p (It's even faster in real life when I'm not capturing @30fps with some duplicate frames in my caputure)
https://youtu.be/s1jj3pLLv1w

vdub and videoredo aren't NLE's. You have 1 layer, you're not accessing multiple videos, multiple layers in realtime. When you do real video editing, not simple cuts (usually that' s normally why you would use something like Premiere or Vegas), it partly relies on random access (you have to jump to different files, and different parts of files, quickly) - that's where a faster storage will help . Even a 2nd slow drive is better than what he has how: When you have both media and system and programs on 1 drive, it's too much work because it tries to writes cache, attempts to seek and read at the same time on the same slow mechanical drive

While it's true I-frame will decode faster, but that doesn't help him, unless he wants to use an I-frame editing intermediate. For 1280x720, multiple layers of long GOP h264 is a non issue on today's hardware. Sure, an I-frame editing intermediate like cineform seek be 10x faster than even FFV1 (FFV1 is slow, heavily compressed, and can use temporal compression - it's not I-frame)

[KarMa]

vdub and videoredo aren't NLE's. You have 1 layer, you're not accessing multiple videos, multiple layers in realtime. When you do real video editing, not simple cuts (usually that' s normally why you would use something like Premiere or Vegas), it partly relies on random access (you have to jump to different files, and different parts of files, quickly) - that's where a faster storage will help . Even a 2nd slow drive is better than what he has how: When you have both media and system and programs on 1 drive, it's too much work because it tries to writes cache, attempts to seek and read at the same time on the same slow mechanical drive

I only do h.264 I frame seeking cause it's faster to seek through compared to touching B-frames which need to reference a P-frame which needs an I frame. Once I am close to a cutting point I then go frame accurate into the GOP.

While it's true I-frame will decode faster, but that doesn't help him, unless he wants to use an I-frame editing intermediate. For 1280x720, multiple layers of long GOP h264 is a non issue on today's hardware.

Not sure what kind of video you deal with but when you are trying to be frame actuate on well compressed x264 videos, videos that encode at a few fps, then decoding also slows down. Not only can the GOP be +300 frames long but then you also have to deal with B frames being used as a reference, which just adds to more complexity to the I/P/B chain. Seeking through simple H.264 compression from my camera is a easy compared to x264. Which is why I use I frames for quick seeking on x264 videos, or even simpler H.264 broadcasts.

Sure, an I-frame editing intermediate like cineform seek be 10x faster than even FFV1 (FFV1 is slow, heavily compressed, and can use temporal compression - it's not I-frame)

FFV1 is lossless and supports key frame = 1, which makes every frame in effect an I frame. A function I use. And supports YV12 along with much higher color spaces. Or you can use Lagarith but the decoding is even worse, but is also lossless.

At 720p, I don't think FFV1 would be that slow. Certainly faster than highly compressed x264 videos. Nor am I advocating using any intermediary in OP's situation. Just wanted to show how easy it was to skip around my 18GB file on a heavily fragmented 5400 rpm drive. This is what that 18GB file looks like on my drive. https://forum.videohelp.com/images/imgfiles/Pgd7bYv.png

At the end of the day we really don't know what OP is up to. Considering OP's hardware and vagueness I tend to believe he is just cutting up pirated 720p-x264 videos for who knows what. Or just cutting up home movies, idk. I just don't believe he/she is doing some serious video work, otherwise get off the laptop.

[Blbr]

@KarMa what does it matter what I do with the footage or how I got it? I don't think it really matters, I said that I do normal editing, nothing too serious. Sometimes I get to do some more serious projects when I am asked to and sometimes I upload some of my personal videos on YouTube. That's all that I am going to say, I really don't feel like I should be explaining anything more than that since my question was pretty simple, would upgrading an HDD or RAM help with the cutting, seeking, etc. in the timeline. Although, don't get me wrong, I really do appreciate that you are trying to help me, despite not knowing why and for what I do my editing.

@poisondeathray I totally agree, from what I had learned so far, a second hard drive would help me a lot. Since I can't find a decent 2.5" 7200rpm HDD(because I could simply swap my ODD with a 2.5" HDD), I will probably go with the SSD.

@hydra3333 Yes I did, mostly the memory is maxing out, the cpu usage isn't very high at all.

[poisondeathray]

Seeking through simple H.264 compression from my camera is a easy compared to x264. Which is why I use I frames for quick seeking on x264 videos, or even simpler H.264 broadcasts.

Yes, most camera files use 1-2 sec GOP, so seeking should be faster than more heavily compressed videos

Sure, an I-frame editing intermediate like cineform seek be 10x faster than even FFV1 (FFV1 is slow, heavily compressed, and can use temporal compression - it's not I-frame)

FFV1 is lossless and supports key frame = 1, which makes every frame in effect an I frame. A function I use. And supports YV12 along with much higher color spaces. Or you can use Lagarith but the decoding is even worse, but is also lossless.

At 720p, I don't think FFV1 would be that slow. Certainly faster than highly compressed x264 videos. Nor am I advocating using any intermediary in OP's situation. Just wanted to show how easy it was to skip around my 18GB file on a heavily fragmented 5400 rpm drive.

FFV1 in I-frame mode is too slow to be useful in editing. If you want speed, try UTVideo or MagicYUV, both lossless and much faster than FFV1 in I-frame mode. They are less compressed (larger filesizes) but more useful for editing intermediates. UT video is the codec of choice in PP, even recommended on the Adobe forums. Those are lossless codecs commonly used for editing because their decoding latency is very low - seeking is very fast. FFV1 is used typically with Long GOP for higher compression. FFV1 isn't supported in PP anyways - you would need something like 64bit FFDShow to decode , and it doesn't support FFV1 1.3 features.

e.g decoding speed for YV12

FFV1 I-frame
72FPS

UTVideo VFW
780FPS

UTVideo ffmpeg
490FPS

That's not a typo - it really is ~10x faster for decoding, about 2x faster for encoding... The ffmpeg UT variant is slower, less optimized than the VFW UT variant . FFV1 is typically used in long GOP mode with temporal compression. It's usually one of the best for that

[poisondeathray]

@hydra3333 Yes I did, mostly the memory is maxing out, the cpu usage isn't very high at all.

What do you mean by this exactly ? Because that would be a bigger problem

Close down unnecessary applications and services . Laptops usually have a zillion junkware installed, try uninstalling the useless ones (usually 99.9% of them)

[Blbr]

@hydra3333 Yes I did, mostly the memory is maxing out, the cpu usage isn't very high at all.

What do you mean by this exactly ? Because that would be a bigger problem

Close down unnecessary applications and services . Laptops usually have a zillion junkware installed, try uninstalling the useless ones (usually 99.9% of them)

It gets to about 80% maybe more sometimes when I am late in editing. And I usually kill all the unnecessary processes before doing any real work.

[KarMa]

@KarMa what does it matter what I do with the footage or how I got it?

Why do you need brakes when you have airbags? See, I can ask silly questions too.

I don't think it really matters, I said that I do normal editing, nothing too serious. Sometimes I get to do some more serious projects when I am asked to and sometimes I upload some of my personal videos on YouTube. That's all that I am going to say, I really don't feel like I should be explaining anything more than that since my question was pretty simple, would upgrading an HDD or RAM help with the cutting, seeking, etc. in the timeline. Although, don't get me wrong, I really do appreciate that you are trying to help me, despite not knowing why and for what I do my editing.

I don't really care what you are doing or the content of your footage. I just want to know if it's an x264 encoded video, as that would be the hardest thing to seek around in a video editor. x264 encoding are great at one thing, compression. It's horrible if you want to edit it, because it compresses without editing in mind. The fact that you say 720p is pretty weird for 2015, making me think of heavily compressed video.

FFV1 in I-frame mode is too slow to be useful in editing. If you want speed, try UTVideo or MagicYUV, both lossless and much faster than FFV1 in I-frame mode. They are less compressed (larger filesizes) but more useful for editing intermediates. UT video is the codec of choice in PP, even recommended on the Adobe forums. Those are lossless codecs commonly used for editing because their decoding latency is very low - seeking is very fast. FFV1 is used typically with Long GOP for higher compression. FFV1 isn't supported in PP anyways - you would need something like 64bit FFDShow to decode , and it doesn't support FFV1 1.3 features.

e.g decoding speed for YV12

FFV1 I-frame
72FPS

UTVideo VFW
780FPS

UTVideo ffmpeg
490FPS

That's not a typo - it really is ~10x faster for decoding, about 2x faster for encoding... The ffmpeg UT variant is slower, less optimized than the VFW UT variant . FFV1 is typically used in long GOP mode with temporal compression. It's usually one of the best for that

I already said that I would not recommend an intermediary in OP's situation. Nor did I say it was the fastest one out there, just that it's probably faster than highly compressed and complex x264 videos, when doing frame accurate seeking. Since OP is probably dealing with x264. I only every brought up FFV1 because I happened to still have a VHS capture. I don't deal with HD lossless stuff, so I just go for the better lossless compression on SD stuff. For any kind of live computer recording in HD I'd probably just use x264 with a decent CRF, but that's just me. My job does not depend on it and my CPU can handle it.

I have no idea what "PP" is, but guess it's Adobe related. Instead of FFV1, doesn't Adobe support Lagarith? I don't use Adobe Premiere much but I recently found it in there.

Considering OP just wants to upload vague 720p videos to youtube, I don't think he cares about huge burden of converting to an intermediary for clean cuts. Nor would I recommend anyone in his situation to do deal with them. But then again we have no idea what he is really doing, so we just assume.

Update: So I figured out PP stands for Premiere Pro, lol. Shows how little I use it.

[Blbr]

@KarMa It's all right. No one is taking anything personally. By 720p I meant that I would like to edit at least at 720p without any lag, I didn't mean to say that it was what I edit all the time. I wonder if avc1 codec is any better? And yes, you may not know what I really do, but that's only because it's not necessary. Like you said, I am not going to go through all the trouble of converting, it would take way too much time with this laptop.

[poisondeathray]

PP = premiere pro. ie. what he is using. Premiere writes cache files (audio peaks, metadata, conforming data) - this is why a 2nd HDD for media is almost mandatory. Mechanical HDD's (and early gen SSDs) have very difficult time with multiple access reading and writing simultaneously . For AE , it'is even more important to have another fast storage, because of RAM previews - it caches all intermediate states, not just the current ram preview (old ram previews as well)

Yes, lagarith is supported in PP, but it's too slow . The only "usable" mathematically lossless codecs for editing purposes (low latency) are ut video and magic yuv. For near-lossless, cineform would probably be the "best". Even UHD/4K is usable on a laptop like his with cineform.