Mobile editing on "low" powered laptop - options?

J

JimNastics

Active member
My situation is that I do a hell of a lot of my editing on location with clients on my laptop, which is a Core2Duo 1.8ghz with 4GB RAM, running Windows XP. I currently use Premiero Pro CS2 for editing, but now I need to upgrade this having made the switch from DV to AVCHD with a HMC151. I can't transcode to an intermediate HD format because of disk space issues - I can only run one external eSata HD at a time, and my projects often involve many hours of footage. Intermediate HD formats are huge on diskspace, and it's just not manageable for me. So I think my options are a) using a new editor that can use DV AVI proxy files, b) hope to god that CS4.1 will edit AVCHD on my laptop ok or c) ---you fill this one in---.

Vegas Pro 9.0 is tempting because of the Vaast Gearshift proxy ability, which would work a treat for me. Are there any other editors which use DV AVI proxies? On the other hand, sticking with Premiere would be nice, considering I've used it all my editing life. The trial doesn't come with AVCHD support though, so I can't test CS4.1 out on my laptop.

Does anyone have any other suggestions or comments on the two options I've suggested??

Thanks in advance :)
Tim
 
I cut on Vegas 8.0 on my notebook when on the road. All of our specs appear to be the same too. I bought Vaast Upshift to transcode with, I never have a problem using my notebook to cut on the road.
 
Jim Vegas is the way to go. Plus you can just loop render your intermediats to save space. Another option is just get an external drive enclosure (Sata) and just slap a drive in it... And bame plenty of space. You can get it in 2.5" or 3.5". The drivers are cheaper in larger sizes in 3.5". I am a dealer and I sell the TB drives with 32meg of cache for around 100.00 and the enclosures for about 20.00. So you should be able to find it for that price.
 
Sorry to bump, but if you have a laptop that isn't powerful enough to edit raw AVCHD, you can transcode it to a different format that isn't as processor intensive? What is the best format without losing too much quality?
 
I've just nabbed this from a reply I made on another thread, which shows where I am at the moment:

I'm in a similar boat to you Matt, in that I need to edit HMC151 footage on a fairly standard laptop (Core2Duo 1.8ghz with 4gb RAM), and I only need to output videos to upload to a site. It chokes on AVCHD natively, so I have recently been testing various options.

Transcode to an intermediate HD format - I'm no expert on this, but I think the reason AVCHD is such a killer to edit natively is due to the extreme compression it uses. A lot of people transcode to formats like CineForm which keep the quality but are far less compressed so less CPU-intensive to edit. The downside is that it takes a long time to transcode, and you end up with massive files... far too big for the environment I work in. This may be fine for you though, so have a search around here for that option.

Transcode to DV AVI - you can use the Panasonic MainConcept transcoder from here. Initially it was only for AVCHD to P2 DVCPRO HD transcoding, but in the last release they added AVCHD to DV AVI support. It works perfectly well, it's a hell of a lot quicker than I expected, and you end up with simple DV AVI files which are a breeze to edit. The downside is that the quality really is poor, suprisingly poor in fact. You need to give it a go to see what you think, I personally was disappoitned with the IQ enough to look at alternative methods. A shame, really.

Use proxy editing - This is the method which has brought me most success. If you use Vegas with a script such as Vasst Gearshift (decent info) or Proxy Stream(decent info), these scripts will create proxy files of your AVCHD files in a format of your choosing (I'm trying DV AVI at the mo). You edit the proxy files and then, when you're ready to export, you tell the script to replace the proxy files with the AVCHD files. If you wanted to, you could actually export from the proxy files instead if you're going to a low-res format... this would save time. I've found that the creating the proxy files can be slow, and exporting from AVCHD files likewise, but it's the method I'm pretty sure I'm going to stick with. If you use the Vegas trial, you'll find that Gearshift won't work. Proxy Stream will work fine though, and will basically provide you a free way of doing your on-tour editing :)

Like I said I'm new to this malarky as well, so others may have more to chip in!
Tim
Click to expand...

I'm currently using the Vegas Pro 9.0 trial and I've got to say I think it's fantastic. I've been a Premiere Pro man for years and was worried about switching, but I'm really enjoying it. I'm going to stick with the Vegas + Proxy Stream (does Gearshift provide anything better for the price?), it works a treat for me.
 
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