Laptop Editing
A laptop is not just for editing on the train. You can carry your system with you wherever you go and edit on a client’s premises, in a comfy arm chair, even capture to it as you film, thereby saving lots of time. And these days laptops have Core2Duo processors - which means they have as much power as a desktop.
This does not mean you can pop into Tescos and buy the latest cheap laptop and edit with no problems. Cheap laptops do not have dedicated graphic cards - which means that they share the computers RAM to run the graphic card which can cause problems with some editing applications. More and more editing applications use the graphic card for a lot of effects work and a shared memory laptop means incorrectly rendered effects, crashing or programs failing to run. Our laptops have dedicated cards with their own memory just like desktop machines.
Cheap laptops generally have a lot less RAM, and the lower spec processors - we would recommend 1GB as the minimum amount of RAM, and if editing HD then 2GB is needed. Finally we need as much space as possible and preferably a laptop with the new express card socket.
What is express card?
Most laptops have PCMCIA sockets - this allows you to connect all sorts of devices, even plug in P2 cards from the latest Panasonic cameras. However, it is relatively slow. Express card is a new interface which is a lot faster. We can plug in external SATA drives to an express card and get 50-60Mbs read and write from the hard drives. That’s as fast as they would run in a desktop and faster than the internal laptop drives!
Can I edit on the Laptop and then take the footage onto my machine back at base?
Yes. All the main programs we sell can all work with a standard OHCI FireWire card for capture and playback.
You can also transfer projects between laptop and desktop computers easily. The only possible problem would be if transferring premiere project between a laptop and a machine with, for example, a Matrox RT.X2 installed. The RT.X2 has its own effects which will only be available on the RT.X2 machine so once you move to the laptop they will all be removed. If you avoid using the specific RT.X effects and stick to normal Premiere ones you will not have this problem.
Can I add any realtime cards?
The only capture card you can use with a laptop is the new Matrox Mini. Apart from this you will only be able to add footage to the laptop through FireWire or using a card based camera format.
Can I edit HDV?
HDV requires a lot of power. However you can edit HDV on our laptops quite happily if they are on mains supply. If you run them on batteries the CPU speed drops to preserve the battery life and playback of HDV becomes jerky.
Can I edit AVCHD?
This depends on the program you are using. Grass Valley Neo with the Booster Pack will work well on a quad core laptop. Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 will also work reasonably well on the quad core. on other models AVCHD works well if transcoded to a different format like Canopus HQ with Grass Valley EDIUS.
