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  1. Can anyone recommend any good notebook that can capture analogue video and is also capable of dealing SD and HD video?. I know laptops are probably not the best for such a thing. My current Windows 8.1 laptop with a Radeon R5 graphics card and 8GB ram (currently 6.96GB) is pretty good at editing but does struggle with certain files even though they are just standard definition in either MP4 or avi, scrolling along on the timeline in Premiere Pro on some of the files is quite slow and lagging, no idea why, so anything in 1980x1080p will be even worse.
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  2. Capturing and editing are different things and require different features. Ideally, capturing should not involve CPU and even the main bus, going around it. I am too lazy to search up the details, but I believe SCSI and Firewire are (were) better in this regard than USB, but USB is all we have now. Editing requires fast CPU, preferably a fast GPU, fast storage and a lot of memory. Also, Premiere is a resource hog. I've seen reports that a modest Macbook Air machine with M1 chip and 8 GB RAM can edit 8K video in realtime. I guess what I am saying that before buying a beefed up Windows machine decide on an NLE and the platform.

    P.S. If you are going to get a Windows machine, I think it is worth paying more to get one with a Thunderbolt port, not just USB-C, in case you'll want to capture from a DV or HDV camcorder.
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  3. Originally Posted by Bwaak View Post
    Capturing and editing are different things and require different features. Ideally, capturing should not involve CPU and even the main bus, going around it. I am too lazy to search up the details, but I believe SCSI and Firewire are (were) better in this regard than USB, but USB is all we have now. Editing requires fast CPU, preferably a fast GPU, fast storage and a lot of memory. Also, Premiere is a resource hog. I've seen reports that a modest Macbook Air machine with M1 chip and 8 GB RAM can edit 8K video in realtime. I guess what I am saying that before buying a beefed up Windows machine decide on an NLE and the platform.

    P.S. If you are going to get a Windows machine, I think it is worth paying more to get one with a Thunderbolt port, not just USB-C, in case you'll want to capture from a DV or HDV camcorder.
    Thanks for the info, I guess the answer is that a Windows Notebook or even a laptop aren't ideal?. The issue with capturing is partly down to my crappy USB capture device (an EasyCap type device) not helped with my mostly quite poorly worn VHS tapes which have suffered badly likely due poor storage and excessive playback. The reason I mention Premiere Pro is because I find it relatively easy to use with as far as cutting and trimming shots. My older Acer laptop running on Vista had a firewire port and it came in handy once when I borrowed someone's DV camcorder to capture some footage I filmed, Premiere could capture the footage (in avi) but my current laptop with only a USB port as my only option of capturing external video won't detect the device. I've used other programmes like the free VSDC editor, but I've found that it produced rather poor quality when exported to the highest quality, and its video capture function is terrible. I've also used a version of Windows Movie Maker which, for some odd reason outputs the files at 29fps when the original imported files were either 30fps or 25fps (a Samsung camera I use sometimes captures 720 video at 30fps, and my Panasonic HD camera records at 25fps). Why the version of Movie Maker I have only encodes files at 29fps I don't know.

    I have read on here somewhere about the Pinnacle 500 capture device.
    Last edited by techmot; 28th Nov 2022 at 16:27.
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  4. Originally Posted by Bwaak View Post
    Capturing and editing are different things and require different features. Ideally, capturing should not involve CPU and even the main bus, going around it. I am too lazy to search up the details, but I believe SCSI and Firewire are (were) better in this regard than USB, but USB is all we have now. Editing requires fast CPU, preferably a fast GPU, fast storage and a lot of memory. Also, Premiere is a resource hog. I've seen reports that a modest Macbook Air machine with M1 chip and 8 GB RAM can edit 8K video in realtime. I guess what I am saying that before buying a beefed up Windows machine decide on an NLE and the platform.

    P.S. If you are going to get a Windows machine, I think it is worth paying more to get one with a Thunderbolt port, not just USB-C, in case you'll want to capture from a DV or HDV camcorder.
    I've heard that when editing it depends on the codec and that codecs such as H.264 can affect performance where you get more lagging than others.
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