New laptop But what is most important
Discussion
GPU encoding is still at the quick and dirty level. Great for fast renders, but not there for final cuts. For basic transcoding, CPU grunt wins out. No point in having less than 8GB RAM in general, and the most, fastest cores you can pay for!
Possibly a daft question, does it need to be a laptop?
Possibly a daft question, does it need to be a laptop?
abbotsmike said:
GPU encoding is still at the quick and dirty level. Great for fast renders, but not there for final cuts. For basic transcoding, CPU grunt wins out. No point in having less than 8GB RAM in general, and the most, fastest cores you can pay for!
Possibly a daft question, does it need to be a laptop?
In short yes it does. mainly as I have has a Windows desktop for many years. My daughters I3 £400 laptop is quikcer than my 5-6 years old gaming desktop. I'm not looking at the most expensive laptop out there just something I can use thats quicker than what I have to edit, transfer and record/encode etc.... Possibly a daft question, does it need to be a laptop?
I have 11GB files from a day out in my kit car. trackday at Silverstone in May. Le mans in June. Family Holiday in Aug etc... so wish to be able to sit in comfort and just make good vids rather than sitting next to a HUGE desktop and screen. I mainly use my Desktop now when I can get onto it for the video editing.
Just thinking it's about time I gave a laptop a go for what I want and see how I get on.
I suspect you can spec a high performance laptop video editing system rather more cheaply
Thinking about the data flow of non-linear video editors (NLEs).
Step by step:
I honestly don't know (I have not got around to doing benchmarks) how that translates to SSDs where head movement is not an issue - however logic suggests that three non-RAID SSD drives would not be a bad idea
So a laptop with two SATA SSDs plus an mSATA SSD should not be a bad starting point (plus an i7 processor because there's a lot of processing going on to support effects and transitions) and as much RAM as possible or to keep the EDL in memory and reduce or at least delay disk writes
It should be possible to pick up a custom system like this: http://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/notebooks/optimusV-1... with 250GB (system plus output) and 750GB (raw assets) Samsung SSDs, 250GB mSata SSD for scratch space, i7-4810MQ cpu and 24GB RAM for around half what the above gaming laptop would cost.
Thinking about the data flow of non-linear video editors (NLEs).
Step by step:
- firstly you'll ingest (spool tapes or copy flash storage) your video assets to a laptop drive. Unless you are using pro video recording equipment that records direct to SSD, it's unlikely that you will be transferring data faster than a 7200rpm SATA 6 drive can read it - but see step 2
- then you'll build a timeline in your NLE project of all or some of your good footage - you may end up using anywhere from 5 to 50 percent (or more) of your original footage. Previewing this at full HD in your NLE means reading a lot of data, so at this stage you're well off having the footage in your current project on SSD
- next you'll apply edits - cuts, transitions, filters and effects in your NLE; these edits will typically be recorded in an edit decision list (EDL) that is small enough to keep in memory and will be stored when you save your project. However, if you now render your project to be able to preview it at full HD resolution, the new video frames will typically be written out to scratch files. This process involves reading the original video assets, processing each changed frame content in the laptop's CPU (or possibly a GPU) and writing the new content to a scratch file. Both original and scratch video files can be multiple gigabytes in size. If you now preview your project, the EDL is reading unchanged video from the source assets and changed video frames (modified through transitions, video effects, filters, text overlays, etc) from a scratch file. How much is read from each location depends entirely on how much change you have applied when editing your video.
- after an iterative process of previewing and refining edits you will render your final video to an output file. So that process can involve reading gigabytes of data from source files, gigabytes of data from scratch files and writing gigabytes of data to an output file.
I honestly don't know (I have not got around to doing benchmarks) how that translates to SSDs where head movement is not an issue - however logic suggests that three non-RAID SSD drives would not be a bad idea
So a laptop with two SATA SSDs plus an mSATA SSD should not be a bad starting point (plus an i7 processor because there's a lot of processing going on to support effects and transitions) and as much RAM as possible or to keep the EDL in memory and reduce or at least delay disk writes
It should be possible to pick up a custom system like this: http://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/notebooks/optimusV-1... with 250GB (system plus output) and 750GB (raw assets) Samsung SSDs, 250GB mSata SSD for scratch space, i7-4810MQ cpu and 24GB RAM for around half what the above gaming laptop would cost.
annodomini2 said:
For video editing, a decent screen!
Then it's basically whatever is in your budget.
This! Don't skimp on screen quality. A decent screen makes video and photo work so much better.Then it's basically whatever is in your budget.
I'm holding off upgrading until the direction of 4K becomes a little more apparent. Too little info on HDMI and thunderbolt specs as yet.
RemaL said:
cheers again Mike
No problem. Looking again at the PCSpecialist site, some of their well-regarded Clevo-chassis systems like http://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/notebooks/vortexIV-L... will let you configure 4 drives if you can live without an optical drive - I can't remember the last time I loaded a DVD into a laptopFor £1325 you could spec an i7-4810MQ processor, 16GB 1600MHz RAM, GTX860M GPU and four drives:
250GB Samsung EVO SSD for system, downloaded games and rendered video project output
750GB WD black for your raw footage
120GB mSATA SSD for your current project assets
120GB mSATA SSD for editor scratch space
That should make a decent mobile video editing workstation
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