Laptops for Video Editing

rhkaloge · Post by **rhkaloge** » Thu Oct 31, 2002 11:09 am

My new job is going to be sending me on the road alot, and I'd like to get a laptop to take with me to do work (yea right) and to pass the time. And there is nothing I like better to pass the time with than making AMVs. But I suspect that there are things that a laptop cannot do that I do on my desktop. I was just wondering if anyone out there uses a laptop to work on AMVs and what they use? I figure at the very least I can watch DVDs to get ideas. Would it be possible to rip dvds and convert clips on a laptop, or is that way too much memory usage? So what do you guys do and use? BTW, I'm open to both mac and PC ideas.

Skippy

The Wired Knight · Post by **The Wired Knight** » Thu Oct 31, 2002 11:44 am

I use to use a laptop, problem is they often don't have the ram or space capabilities you get from a PC. Most will cause you problems with a capture card so I recomend purchasing external hardware for you capturing needs. To even suit my basic requirements I had to have a custom built laptop for AMV editing, which I recomend over a store purchased PC anytime. All my computers are custom built and upgraded.

Mask of Destiny · Post by **Mask of Destiny** » Thu Oct 31, 2002 12:15 pm

I have one of the higher end IBM A31ps. It has a 1.8GHz P4, a 60GB 5400RPM hard drive, 256MB RAM (upgradeable to 1GB), S-Video In and Out, Firewire, 1600x1200 LCD (great for all those stupid palettes), ATI FireGL 7800 w/ 64MB video RAM. Premier runs pretty well on it. It would be nice to have a faster drive, but they don't make 7200 RPM 2.5" drives so you might want to consider an external firewire drive. I haven't actually tried to do any serious editing on it yet. The only time I tried to edit on the machine at all was before I installed HuffYUV and the hard drive isn't fast enough to play uncompressed video in real time so it was rather painful. The video out works pretty well, but I haven't tried the video in.

Red Wolf · Post by **Red Wolf** » Thu Oct 31, 2002 12:38 pm

I use an Apple iBook and the only piece of hardware I need is the external FireWire hard drive all laptops will need for AMV creation. As long as you have a DVD drive (CD-RW/DVD combo drives are best) and that external drive you are set to go with DVD ripping and the later editing. I would recommend an large internal hard drive (like around 30-40 GB) just because I find I keep a lot of things on my laptop since it travels all over town with me.