Laptop for edius & raylight duties.

[ROne]

Could anyone speculate whether either of these laptops (64x2, or Centrino Core Duo) would be more than powerful enough for all duties? Editing/Capturing/Viewing.

http://www.rockdirect.com/consumer_notebooks.htm

The XtremeCTX or Xtreme64.

I'm trying to avoid a desktop where possible due to space in my studio.

Is there anything in it when it comes to laptop v desktops at this level?

What processer speed in these dual cores that would be enough?

Is there a definite intel/amd choice to be made when it comes to edius or raylight/premiere combo? It seems to me that the intels are lighter and smaller...

Are there any other pitfalls when picking a laptop over a desktop here?

I realise there is a lot of speculation going on, but I have no experience of dual-core systems or the latest laptop technology.

I want to be able to load my P2 card into edius and edit. Are these laptops powerful enough to shove 720p25 around in realtime..

Thanks.

[Andreas]

WOW... Where did you find this... thats my laptop but with diferent brand and some diferent specs !

http://www.rockdirect.com/notebooks/xtremeti_cons.htm

Here is from where I bought it in Greece
http://www.plaisio.gr/IWCatProductPage.process?Section_Id=30162479&Nav_Section_Id=&Catalog_Id=5&Product_Id=264930&Merchant_Id=1&sts_cid=3

You can put dual core also in the particular model, forget what the specs say, it is socket 775. But when 3.8 mhz cost less then a fortune it will be just fine. I worked with Edius trial version and 3ghz without problem with 720p24p MXF files. I can't help you with Raylight, I don't know. But this is a superb laptop. The model you mention with Centrino I don't think it has Sata Raid 0 capability and this is what you want the most. I don't know about capturing since I don't own the camera Viewing and editing was made with MXF files I got from here:
http://hvx200.moctel.com/Users/cre8tive/Sundance%20HVX%20MXF%20files/
no problems with two and three streams playing at once. Althought you have to render alot, witch is fine cause is very quick, at least for my needs.
The trick with any laptop is: have OS in the RAID0 internal disks, your working footage in an 7200rpm firewire external and your project files (wich includes the render files of caurse) in a second firewire external. Using G-Raid is esential of caurse but I don't know if it works with Edius yet. I don't see Edius in G-Raid compatibility list, I have emailed G-Tech and I wait for there anwser.

Hope this helps.

[mule ferguson]

http://www.xtremenotebooks.com/
This is also the same computer. I purchased the AMD Dual Core 4800 2 G ram. 200 Raid 0 I use it with Edius Broadcast. To work well with DVCPRO HD you gonna need the Horsepower.
Mule Ferguson

[spunknoid]

As I understand it, AMD has yet to introduce a low power notebook chip. The chips in these notebooks are the standard high power consumption chips. They are fast, but do not have a long battery life.

So if you want battery life and power, you might have to go with Intel. BUT, if you're not doing much on a battery, these laptops are smokin'.

[ROne]

So, is it better to go AMD or INTEL? I did some quick net research and it looks like intel is better for compression and the like and loses on gaming etc.

Also intel based laptop is smaller and lighter, probably don't get as hot.

Is it really necessary to raid the OS drive?

I'm using a 2400 sempron laptop with 256mB of ram and nothing in the way of power and you can edit raylight/720p in medium/low quality without too much headache. Output from the timeline to WMV-HD is about 20x realtime though.

Is the bottleneck the chip/ram or the drives on HD stuff?

[spunknoid]

My experience is that the AMD chips are faster for rendering videos, but hotter in notebooks. (No dangerously, just run hotter)

Intel notebook chips are cooler and longer battery life, but less powerful with rendering.

The question you need to answer is are you going for power usage or will your battery life be a factor.

If you travel, Intel (lighter, cooler, long battery). If you are using it as a desktop replacement, limited travel, AMD (more CPU power).

Hope that helps with your decision.

[ROne]

Yep that does help, thanks.

[Jason Ramsey]

Hey. I wanna dig this up again.

I have very recently been thinking of getting a laptop instead of a desktop. Just wanted to explore the possibility for the benefit of being mobile.

What about editing dvcpro hd footage. the laptop drive isn't going to be big enough. So plugging up an external to it through usb or firewire... will that bog down real-time editing with broadcast 4

Jason

[Barry_Green]

I just ordered a new laptop; I spent a ridiculous amount of time trying to piece together something that would be ideal for the HVX/P2; I shopped Compaq and HP and Dell and AlienWare and Fujitsu and Toshiba and Acer and Lenovo before finding what I think is the perfect P2/HVX field editing system.

Get this: it's a Sony. Sony has the right product that makes for the ideal P2 laptop.

I went with a VAIO VGN-SZ340. It includes all the key components:
1) it has a PCMCIA slot for P2 ingest

2) it has a Core 2 Duo processor for the fastest operation today and support for Windows X64 and Vista in the future

3) it has an SD card slot for reading/writing SD cards so you can edit your scene files

4) it has a firewire port (and it's a 4-pin, so no worries about hot-plugging or unplugging the HVX) for live DV Rack 2.0 HD streaming or EDIUS streaming

5) it has an ExpressCard slot for future expansion or for adding Firewire 800 or e-SATA ports (although it's ExpressCard/34, I wish it was ExpressCard/54)

6) it uses internal SATA drives. The one it comes with is only 5400 RPM but that should hopefully be enough to do live capture with; as drives get bigger and cheaper I'll replace it with a 160gb 7200rpm when affordable & necessary.

7) it includes a dual-layer DVD burner, if you want to back up 4gb or 8gb cards optically.

8) while it wasn't cheap, it was about $1,000 less than the Macbook Pro, for a faster system that I think is far more suited for the P2 field workflow. Sure would be nice if Apple would sell OSX for PCs, then we could really have the best of both worlds!

I went with the smaller laptop because I do so much traveling, so it's a 13.3" screen and 4 pounds, with 6 hour battery life. They have others with 17" 1920x1200 screens too if that's what you're after.

The key shopping ingredients for me were: 1) a PCMCIA slot, 2) a firewire port, 3) an SD slot, 4) a Core 2 Duo processor, and 5) an ExpressCard slot. Sony is about the only manufacturer who has it all and has it available right now. They also have an AR series that includes a blu-ray drive for those who want to archive to blu-ray, but those are big and heavy and expensive (around $3300 or so).

[Jason Ramsey]

Thanks much for sharing Barry.
I am looking at coming in right at about the same price as I am budgeted for the dell workstation I am looking at. about 2300-2400 or so. Plus 350 for a display, + 200-300 for extra storage. So if I take the 350 for the display and put it towards the laptop, I would be looking at being able to go 26-2700 or so. And still using the budget for extra storage (external in this case).

My main concern is storage space with a laptop. With that, wondering if I would be able to edit real-time on a laptop from an external fw800 drive or something. That is my main concern.

I am going laptop or desktop, not both. It's real easy to get a desktop, but a laptop has the benefit of being mobile, which adds to the appeal for me.
Smaller projects, fine. But, when it comes to something larger, like an event, am I going to be able to handle it on a laptop with an external drive, is my concern. Whatever laptop I get (if I go that route) will have to have pcmcia, and come in close to the budget I have figured for the desktop.

Any experience or idea's about whether real-time is going to be an option editing off of an external drive on the laptop? Anyone doing this?
I did see from one company, (don't remember which) a second hard drive that you can swap in and out with the optical drive. A 100 gigs of that at 7200 rpm might be ok for editing most things (size wise anyways). And then just use an external for extra storage and such if external can't handle real-time editing

Thanks,
Jason

Edit : Great looking system by the way Barry. I bet you're pretty excited. Keep me posted on how it works for ya, if you don't mind.
I would be looking for a larger screen probably though, since it would be serving as my editing system as well, if I indeed find it feasible to go this route.

Edit again: Barry, my wife told me to ask you if you would buy her a Sony Vaio. :) She is from Indonesia. They love Sony there. hehe. yeah.

[Scrappy]

I got the acer 9805. It's duo core, two gig of ram, 20 and half inch screen, Hd dvd player, two 120 gig 5400 built in hard drives, pcmci and express card slot and it weighs 17 pounds. The good news is So far it seems powerful enought to edit on. I have been using the demo version of broadcast 3 which is working very well and fast. The only glitch is when I have it on battery power it seems to lose some of its processing power and the clips don't play smoothly in the p2 viewer. (Only when it's not plugged in)

[Jason Ramsey]

Are you only editing on the internal drives? Have you tried editing off of an external?

thanks
Jason

Ok so I completely am out of the loop on expresscard stuff. I can use a sata II drive hooked up with an sata II cable? That would definitely solve that problem.

I am having a hard time finding laptops that I can customize. I need to find something with a dvi out ( I can get a smaller display that way), pcmcia, express card, 7200rpm system drive.
Gotta come in at 2400 'ish. or 2700ish for a 20" or so display.....

Sorry. Just thinking out loud. hmmm. This could be a good option. I would love to be able to be mobile, and use my lappy for live capture if need be as well. eSATA is great. Solves a problem. Now can I do this and still come in on my workstation budget??? HMMM

Jason

[Jason Ramsey]

aw crap.
I can find a laptop with pcmcia and expresscard. A widescreen display. Dvi out. Everything at a good price, but it is only core duo.

I can find a core 2 duo laptop with everything but a pcmcia.

What I don't like about the Sony's (for the price) is that they only have the option of 5400 rpm drives, and that they are only using 533 mhz ram. Other than that, and being more expensive then comparably figured notebooks from other companies, they have everything.

I really like the acer's but they are not configurable...

geez

Jason

[Scrappy]

Ramjet I am editing on the second internal hard drive and with the basic editing I've tried it works fine. (Its actually faster than my desktop which is a pentium 4.) They are only 5400 drives but I am able to watch any format footage fluidly. YOu might want to consider this acer "Acer Aspire 9805 wkhi" It is fully loaded and I paid 2400 us dollars at compusa. It's too heave to sit on your lap. I consider it a portable desktop. The only wierd issue I have is the apparent loss of prossessor power when it is in battery mode. good luck

[Jason Ramsey]

hmm. Thanks for the info. I was looking at the 9805 today, but I think I am going to go ahead and go with my workstation for now, and look at getting a laptop in the future. Though, that laptop is tempting. I want my big widescreen display and extra storage, and need a good solid desktop for my work first. Then, down the road, I will look into getting a laptop as well. I just hope I can find some that have both pcmcia, expresscard, and dvi out in the future.
thanks for the info.

FYI. I am trying to find a site, I was reading today that mentioned how most of the major brands are not configured properly to take advantage of the dual cores. There is a reg edit fix for this. When I find it I will post somewhere for everyone, as this was news to me.

Jason

[JimJulian]

At KRON-TV we use a dual core Panasonic laptop loaded with Edius Broadcast 3.61 for a TV show we are producing in the field. It has two PCMCI slots and I believe a gig of memory. We download P2 cards to an external Lacie Porsche 250 gig USB 2 hard drive.
We shoot 720 24p.
Cards are loaded into hard drive using the Edius P2 Utility. Very fast downloads. On average, 10 minutes of material was injested in about 5 minutes. The P2 Utility puts the footage in Edius bins that I pre-name.
I drag all clips to the timeline for continuity, exposure, and audio check.
Once everything checks out, we reformat the card.
On this system, Edius plays back the footage flawlessly. We even color corrected a bunch of footage by adding 3 different effects. Everything played back in real real time.
I've been very impressed with this laptop and the external USB2 hard drive.

jim

[Jason Ramsey]

okkkayyyy.... I am re visiting this, after finding eSATA II enclosures and an eSATA expresscard

I am still looking at the same aspire 9805 you referenced scrappy.

The footage you are editing on it is dvcpro correct?

I would edit off of the external drives hooked up via eSATA. That should also help aye?

Are core duo laptops upgradeable to a core 2 duo processor???
I may want to do this in the future if I went this route since the quad cores will be coming soon and drop the prices of the core 2's

I think that is it. What kind of battery life are you getting scrappy? Not that I will be using the battery much except for field p2 offloading.

Thanks Jim Julian for the info. you are editing off of the internal drive correct?

Thanks a bunch. Gotta make up my mind quick. I am starting to order stuff next week. I keep going back and forth on this laptop thing. If I can know confidently that I would be able to handle the footage I need with a lappy using eSATA drives to edit from, I just may go that route.

It will only cost me about 2-300 more than the workstation I am looking at, not be as fast processor wise, but will allow me to be mobile, and I could still get the 22" wide screen that I am looking at for dual displays and such

Thanks
Jason

[bhiga]

The DVCPRO HD stream itself is 100 Mbit/sec, which equates to 12.5 MB/sec, not including any filesystem overhead.

Most modern fast drives (that aren't fragmented) can handle two streams of DVCPRO HD, perhaps not sustained indefinitely, but at least for a good amount of time.

Brandon

[Jason Ramsey]

Ok, thanks. so running a 10k rpm drive or sata II 7200rpm drive through sata via expresscard should be ok for that?

2.16 ghz core duo be ok ya think?

thanks much
Jason

[JimJulian]

Actually we can edit off the external drive in the field if we choose. Frankly, I much prefer a dual monitor setup back at the office on a desktop. The laptop config is just for field shooting.

[ROne]

I'm a bit late in this thread.

I'v got two acers: both dual core 1.66 (one of the slowest) with one gig of ram, both internal sata 5400 drives, firewire and pcmcia and express.

One is a travelmate, much sturdier (carbon lid and better hinges) than the other - an aspire. Essentially they are close in spec (the 8202 travelmate has a much higher rez screen).

The 8202 was £1200 and the aspire 5672 was £700.

Both run edius 4 broadcast fine in realtime at 720. Internal drive and external drive - I've not had any problems at all. When you pile on lots of effects and multiple streams you may need to do a little rendering.

But on the whole for the average edit they have been fine. Very stable.

My only tip is that some of the bloatware needs removing from both of these - they each come running approx 50 threads, which I've got down to 30 or so.

[tazza]

I'm running a P4 3.2 Alienware (heavy) notebook w/2gigs of ram. I've been messing around with the Eduis 4 trial software and it seems to work with no problems in performance.
2 questions:
1. How do you like working with Raylight?
2. Would you know when Adobe is going to address the P2 issue?
This is the deciding factor whether or not I upgrade to the new Video Collection or trash Adobe and go with Canopus>
What's your opinion?

[ROne]

Raylight has been great for what I wanted to initially do, but now I find that I'm using Edius more and more, it still seems quirky compared to premiere but that's more to do with the time I have spent with it.

I don't know what adobe are waiting for, perhaps they are happy supporting HDV ... or waiting for P2 to proliferate ... who knows, but I need hidef editing now so I made the jump to edius.