video editing on a laptop? Yes it's feasible

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.video,rec.video.production,rec.video.desktop (More info?)

Crow wrote:
> On Thu, 10 Jun 2004 23:07:31 -0400, "Mike Kujbida"
> <kujfam-misleadingspam@sympatico.ca> wrote:
>
>> Since Crow's original post got hijacked, I figured we owe him/her the
>> courtesy of trying to answer the original questions which were:
>
> Thanks Mike,
>
> A new thread just on-topic, and what happens? Anyway, life would be
> boring if it was controllable.
>
> After some thought I figure I'm gonna build a desktop. I'm trying to
> live in the moment and I don't need a laptop now so I won't buy one.
> I figure that when you buy a good spec laptop and add an external hard
> disk and DVD writer, the price gets so high that I could build myself
> a good spec desktop and buy a basic laptop for the same price. So
> I'll build the desktop and buy a laptop if I need it later.
> So now I just have to do some more research on what components make a
> good video editing suite, in hard and soft terms.
> Vegas keeps coming up, so I will download a demo and check it out. The
> place I'm renting has a 2 Mb cable connection, which is very sweet
> after using a modem for most of my Internet life. 100 MB demos, no
> problemo
>
> Now that I've found digs in Amsterdam, I can get this documentary
> process started. I've been put in contact with 2 people who are
> filming related projects and another person who is interested in being
> the camera operator on my project, in the 2 weeks since I've been
> here. Things are flowing well a ce moment.
>
> There's also a branch of SAE in Amsterdam. They run 15 month courses
> in digital film making. I figure if I can't get this project off the
> ground without serious training, it's good to know there's another
> option.
>
> Love
>
> Crow


First of all, best of luck with your project.
On the issue of building your own, there's a pretty good article at
http://www.videoguys.com/DIY.html
If you want to see what a high-end machine is built from, check out the the
machines at www.alienware.com and then build your own using their specs.
All prices are in U.S. dollars.

Mike

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.video,rec.video.production,rec.video.desktop (More info?)

On Sun, 13 Jun 2004 14:46:57 -0400, "Mike Kujbida"
<kujfam-misleadingspam@sympatico.ca> wrote:

>First of all, best of luck with your project.
>On the issue of building your own, there's a pretty good article at
>http://www.videoguys.com/DIY.html
>If you want to see what a high-end machine is built from, check out the the
>machines at www.alienware.com and then build your own using their specs.
>All prices are in U.S. dollars.
>
>Mike

Thanks again,

You preempted me, as my next question was going to be asking for a
recommendation on a site that gives me the skinny on what the most
important aspects of a PC are for editing. I.e. Is it really
essential to use a separate drive for the video when using enough RAM
so that paging isn't an issue. That kinda thing.

Love

Crow

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.video,rec.video.production,rec.video.desktop (More info?)

Crow wrote:
> On Sun, 13 Jun 2004 14:46:57 -0400, "Mike Kujbida"
> <kujfam-misleadingspam@sympatico.ca> wrote:
>
>> First of all, best of luck with your project.
>> On the issue of building your own, there's a pretty good article at
>> http://www.videoguys.com/DIY.html
>> If you want to see what a high-end machine is built from, check out
>> the the machines at www.alienware.com and then build your own using
>> their specs. All prices are in U.S. dollars.
>>
>> Mike
>
> Thanks again,
>
> You preempted me, as my next question was going to be asking for a
> recommendation on a site that gives me the skinny on what the most
> important aspects of a PC are for editing. I.e. Is it really
> essential to use a separate drive for the video when using enough RAM
> so that paging isn't an issue. That kinda thing.
>
> Love
>
> Crow


The videoguys site is a good one for explaining what's recommended as far as
an NLE sytem is concerned. You'll find that separate drives are strongly
recommended for video editing. My home system has a 40 gig system drive and
a 120 gig video drive. If I was doing this for a living, I'd have 2 even
larger video drives - one for the captured material and the second for the
edited project. Some folks have even more than that. It all depends on
what you needs are and what you can afford.
I know that if you browse the various Vegas forums, the question of an
"ideal" system comes up on a regular basis. I'm sure this is the case on
the Premiere and Avid forums as well.
When you get a parts list together, post it here for opinions. I'm sure
you'll get several.

Mike

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.video,rec.video.production,rec.video.desktop (More info?)

It's quite easy to edit a full movie on a laptop, even slower older ones
running CPUs like the older Athlon XP 2400+ CPU on the eMachines M5310.

Real-time cards are great as long as you stick with the effects they can
render in real-time, and have only a limited number of video tracks to
mix together. At some point, you will exceed the capacity of the card
with too many tracks/effects and you won't be previewing the video in
real-time.

Of couse, most of these cards will lock you into the Premiere platform
(one or two devices for the Avid platform)

Most video editors (eg. Vegas Video) can show live, real-time previews
of your work as long as you have sufficient CPU power and a limited
number of effects/tracks in play in software w/o HW assist today.

---

However, the ultimate limits of the final rendering process are CPU
power & HD speed.

Here, HD speed limits the ability to pull the original video off the HD
for encoding and effects processing by the CPU, and the rate at which
the final video can be written to the HD.

Naturally, if the 1) pull video off HD 2) effects and video processing
by CPU 3) write final video to HD steps takes longer than the usual
30fps frame rate of standard video playback rate, then you'll be
effectively processing in non-realtime (ie. 1 hour of original video
will take longer than 1 hour to process and output as final video).

As far as anybody has cared to show or prove for the common PC (whether
desktop or laptop), it can't be done with software alone, so here,
faster is better! With hardware, often, you'll have to get an
optimized, high-end system running a solid HW card to attempt this
(which excludes laptops unless you're using Avid & Mojo.).

Of course, you'll have to test to see whether any of these devices
provide the features (eg. effects) you need.

---

Typically, if you're rendering a 2 hour video in Vegas Video 4.0 with
cross-fade transitions between video clips, and basic audio level
adjustments, then it'll take about 3-4 hours to render on a 2Ghz P4 with
512MB, 7200rpm 120GB HD, XP PC desktop.

This is a 2:1 ratio limited by both CPU speed and HD speed (it's only a
single HD).

A fast Athlon 64+ laptop such as that made by eMachines should match
this performance easily (here, you may want to upgrade slower 4200/5400
rpm laptop HDs to 7200rpm models).

A PC desktop that has an overclocked P4 processor at 4.1Ghz (or multiple
processors for those video editing programs that support this) +
quadruple 15,000 rpm SCSI HDs in RAID 0 configuration (or solid-state
RAM HD) should sufficiently speed things up to be of value to those
wanting significantly faster.

---

This chart provides an indirect example of CPU speed vs. encoding times
(here, to MPEG-2 for DVD output):

http://www6.tomshardware.com/cpu/20040322/prescott-13.html
http://www6.tomshardware.com/cpu/20040517/northwood_prescott-10.html
http://www6.tomshardware.com/cpu/20030217/cpu_charts-26.html

Here, 4.1Ghz P4 does the job in ~140 seconds, a standard 3.4Ghz P4 at
~157 seconds, Athlon 64+ 3200+ at ~185 seconds (although desktop CPU,
compare vs. laptop use, usually slower).