Laptop recommendations for editing EX1 footy

G

gmoe

Well-known member
Hey guys,

Very excited that I have my EX1 fixed and ready to go and have tested out my K&S card readers and they work beautifully. I'll be continuing to shoot my doc in Hawaii in the next couple weeks so I'll put this camera and my Letus Ultimate to the test.

Just to add for K&S users, I have also been using ADATA SDHC 16GB cards Class 6 which works just as flawless as my Sandisk Ultra II's and thirty dollars cheaper.

(One of the cards was the same card that got washed in my washer when I left it in my pants pocket. I posted a thread on this in the HMC150 section :) )

Anyhow, I need a good solid laptop to edit with on the road. I'm hoping to catch a deal during the after X-mas sales maybe at Fry's Electronics since I'm here in Los Angeles right now.

Any advice from the vertean EX1 users who are always on the go? I'm a PC person but also use Mac, tempted to get the new Macs now that you can run it like a PC.

Thanks all in advance,

Gary
 
My portable is a MacBook Pro.

Works well with the XDCam EX footage.

I usually connect to a mirrored SATA raid through Firmtek's SpyderHub, or work off a firewire drive. The SpyderHub leaves my Express card slot open to read the camera cards, and the data goes to the drives via the Firewire port.

As much as possible I try to copy the footage to a mirrored RAID first. Then work off copies after that.
 
My portable is a Dell Mobile 6300 running XP64. In fact, this has become my primary cutting machine. Once I have something I like, I move my assets over to my desktop for color and other work. It's slower but has my calibrated monitor, BluRay, 2 DVD recorders, etc.

If I have a particularly LONG render, I'll move the finals over to a dedicated render machine. That one is headless, but it's fast. I can render over there while still working on the laptop of the desktop I use for grading.
 
Dean,

You actually got a SpyderHub to work? I played with it for a couple of days and could not get it to recognize a single eSata drive. FirmTek told me it would only recognize their enclosures/drives so I sent it back. Are you using FirmTek devices?

The answer to "what computer?" is in good part mitigated by which NLE you wish to use. MBPro gives you great options because you can run both Windows and MacOS based NLE's.
 
Not bad..

So it sounds like an intel core 2 duo laptop should do the trick if I go the PC route--

What's your cpu speed on your intel core 2 duo laptop? I don't want to break the bank but I want something that can handle editing the footage.

Thanks again guys!
 
My Dell M90 CPU is 2.16GHz

It is decent but I still will get a good workstation next year to take advantage of the 64bit RAM options.
 
Working on a MacBookPro as well.
Due to its Intel Core Duo 2 processor, I am able to run Mac OS (Final Cut Studio and family)
as well as WinXP (through Parallels) and only-win-software concurrently.

FWIW, the MBP is a 2.6 GHz version with 4MB RAM/512 VideoRAM and a 250GB HD/5400 rpm. Attached to a 30" LCD (Cinema Display).
Will soon replace the HD with a 256 GB SSD.
FCP 6.05 runs EX material absolutely smoothly. Don't do Grading, Compositing, just Editing and HD>SD Scaling/DVD Authoring.


gmoe, think about this MBP laptop. You can go both worlds. Highly recommended.
 
PKraft said:
Working on a MacBookPro as well.
Due to its Intel Core Duo 2 processor, I am able to run Mac OS (Final Cut Studio and family)
as well as WinXP (through Parallels) and only-win-software concurrently.

FWIW, the MBP is a 2.6 GHz version with 4MB RAM/512 VideoRAM and a 250GB HD/5400 rpm. Attached to a 30" LCD (Cinema Display).
Will soon replace the HD with a 256 GB SSD.
FCP 6.05 runs EX material absolutely smoothly. Don't do Grading, Compositing, just Editing and HD>SD Scaling/DVD Authoring.


gmoe, think about this MBP laptop. You can go both worlds. Highly recommended.
Click to expand...

Does it come with xp installed? what are the pros/cons of a dual boot system?
 
brianluce said:
Does it come with xp installed? what are the pros/cons of a dual boot system?
Click to expand...
You have to purchase XP separately.
Your second "machine" is a an app, Parallels, which allows you to rund Mac and Win at the same time. very convenient. Not much configuration needed. Look there: www.parallels.com.

As an alternative you can decide do run Win on your Mac or, after a restart, Mac.
Whichever you like more or need more.
No additional software apart from XP needed. Works with the push of a button during restart.
 
Gary,
If you dont need a PC laptop urgently, I would advice you to wait for Intel's Nehalem-based laptop CPU codename "Calpella". It is a huge architecture change from the current platform, it gives more power and certainly it will be designed for power users (like us, video editors).
 
You can run Windows (either XP or Vista) on a modern Mac (MacBookPro, MacBook, MacPro, any model with Intel processors). I would recommend you run it with Apple's free Boot Camp application (comes with the computer). But you'll need a valid copy of Windows to install on the machine.

Running Boot Camp means you have to restart the machine everytime you want to switch from the Apple operating system to Windows.

On the other hand you could run Parallels or Fusion, but in my experience, things like Firewire ports are not supported.

Do you have a lot of expensive editing software already? If not, just buy Final Cut Studio (or Final Cut Express if you want to save money) and don't worry about running Windows on the computer. Just run Apple's operating system. It's easy to learn, and you don't have to worry about viris protection software.
 
Thanks guys!

Hmm... I may have to wait for the "Nehalem-based laptop CPU" . I'll have to do a little more research on that cpu. Thanks for that info. John as always!

In the meantime, I'm going to see what Black Friday Deux has to offer in terms of laptop deals. :)

Thanks all!

-G
 
Source: http://www.geekzone.co.nz/content.asp?contentid=8003

The Intel Core i7 processor, the first member of a new family of Nehalem processor designs - and the company says it is the most sophisticated ever built, with new technologies that boost performance on demand and maximise data throughput.

The Core i7 processor speeds video editing, immersive games and other popular internet and computer activities by up to 40 percent without increasing power consumption.

The Turbo Boost Technology accelerates performance to match a computer user’s needs and workloads. Through a sophisticated on-die power control unit and using new ‘power gate’ transistors based on Intel’s advanced 45 nanometer, high-k metal gate manufacturing process, Turbo Boost automatically adjusts the clock speed of one or more of the four individual processing cores for single- and multi-threaded applications to boost performance, without increasing power consumption.

source: http://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-nehalem-cpu,5560.html
CPU utilization during video editing was well distributed across all 4 cores. The system utilized its thread processing very effectively, and at no point was there any halting or delay.
 
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