Help choosing a notebook

R13...

R13...

Honorary Master
Joined
Aug 4, 2008
Messages
54,024
Reaction score
29,655
Location
the One State...
Good morning all,

I need your help choosing a laptop, the requirements are,
-It is a video editing laptop (3+Gb RAM)
-Make can be anything but Toshiba
-Please recomment good video editing software/suite
-Recomment good website content management software/tools suite
-Must be buyable locally (company buying, so not going to import)
-Lots of storage capacity (320Gb+ HDD)
-and oh, it must be windows 32bit (official final version, not beta or pre-release - probably vista).

I have tried the usual Dell/HP, but their websites take ages to load and are a nightmare to navigate. I am looking for an all-in-one solution.

Thanks.
 
Do you want a 17" diskplay? Try the HP Elitebook 8730w, its around R25 000. I use Adobe Premiere for video editing.
 
Yeah 17" would be great for video I would imagine.
Thanks Conrad esp about the Adobe Premiere for video editing.
 
Why do you need a laptop though?

For video editing would you not be better off buying a good desktop which would have more power than a 25k laptop?
 
I'm there on the desktop. Interested to know why not Toshiba, seeing as a number of manufacturers use their components...

I use an Acer 17" Notebook, never given me any trouble, they have a decent warrany. Parts for notebooks are really expensive and waiting for them to repair it can take 3 weeks or longer.

Hard drive is probably the most critical esp for video editing. Having physically separate volumes should help. I'm not sure what size SSD's are up to at the moment, but that could be something to check out, from a weight, size, energy and data integrity point of view - you might sacrifice on IO and price though. You're never going to be able to do long term storage of footage on the machine itself so you're going to have to decide if you compress your original footage or back it up onto optical disk. I'd see if anything has Blu-ray built in, for archiving and mastering in future (really expensive right now though). But if you're editing HD, DVD's might get a bit much for archiving. External HDD's are always vulnerable to theft and crashes.

I like Premiere, especially the full Adobe Video Suite, After Effects is brilliant if you can afford it, throw in the Audio editing and DVD comp software, you're ready to go. I've used FCP and Motion before, find them over-rated.

If you have separate hard drives, you can play with your OS without having to worry about messing with your personal files. I've worked in 64-bit XP, didn't really notice a huge performance improvement, but I'd probably go XP over Vista. Vista can be buggy and Windows 7 is basically service pack 3 for Vista, so don't bother installing Vista. That said, I've just installed the Adobe Web CS3 on Windows 7 RC without any problems. WMP 12 can finally play MP4, AAC and H264 using native VFW filters. Took long enough.

I would probably go 15" high-spec notebook next time, and then spend the extra cash on a 24" samsung display (R2 900), BT mouse & KB and decent carry bag if necessary. Less mission to lug it around and better battery life vs 17".

What do you need the CMS for?
 
Last edited:
The company website content is managed by an external supplier and they want to do this in-house (let the communications people do it themselves).
 
larrychang said:
Good morning all,

I need your help choosing a laptop, the requirements are,
-It is a video editing laptop (3+Gb RAM)
-Make can be anything but Toshiba
-Please recomment good video editing software/suite
-Recomment good website content management software/tools suite
-Must be buyable locally (company buying, so not going to import)
-Lots of storage capacity (320Gb+ HDD)
-and oh, it must be windows 32bit (official final version, not beta or pre-release - probably vista).

I have tried the usual Dell/HP, but their websites take ages to load and are a nightmare to navigate. I am looking for an all-in-one solution.

Thanks.
Click to expand...

Why not go with a Macbook Pro?

What will you be editing? or rather what will you be acquiring?

If it's Panasonic P2 based HD DVC ProHD then you'll need a PCMCIA laptop, Apple no longer does those. You can still connect via FW/USB.

If it's Sony based XDCAM EX then an ExpressCard slot is an advantage. You can also connect direct via USB.

What suite to use?

Basically 3 choices, excluding AVID.

Cheapest is SONY VEGAS. (PC)
Most Expensive is Adobe Premiere. (Mac / PC)
Best is Final Cut Studio 2. (Mac)

FCS 2 offers you everything you'll need to edit video and render advanced effects, correct shakes with Optical Flow, do motion graphics, do basic and advanced colour correction AE/Adobe users can only dream of, video compositing, titling, slow motion with frame interpolation, effects rendering and so on. It offers support for HDV, DVCPro HD and XDCAM HD/EX formats out of the box or with a free downloadable upgrade. FCS 2 can also work with AE or with Shake if you want to do advanced effects but with FCS alone and a great suite of plugins from NoiseIndustries or Boris, you can do anything AE can do and Motion beats AE, while Shake is a higher end application. For corporate video, basic FCS functionality is more good enough.
 
Thanks Peter. Mac not an option cause IT wont support it. The source is a Sony HDV and can't be acquired via USB. Thats what the manual says. I will get exact specs of cam later. In meeting til later. Ta.
 
larrychang said:
Thanks Peter. Mac not an option cause IT wont support it. The source is a Sony HDV and can't be acquired via USB. Thats what the manual says. I will get exact specs of cam later. In meeting til later. Ta.
Click to expand...

You can capture Sony HDV either via USB or Firewire/iLink.
(if USB doesn't work, FW definately works. HDV workflow is tape based - like MiniDV or DV-CAM.)
(I've only worked with XDCAM and MiniDV and the former works with USB while the latter with FW).

If IT won't support Mac, go with SONY VEGAS on a high end SONY VAIO.

You can preview what the various packages are like here:
www.lynda.com
The first few lessons are free for each tutorial.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X