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Laptop for video editing
Fish Go Deep
Posts: 4,912 Forum Member
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I am looking for a laptop to do some video editing, am pretty new to this so any advice would be most helpful,
Majority of the videos are on SD card, so would like any advice as to what laptop if anyone has done anything similar and what editing software is needed or recommended? Also would like to write to DVD, as I said am a complete newbie in this field so any basic advice would be appreciated
Majority of the videos are on SD card, so would like any advice as to what laptop if anyone has done anything similar and what editing software is needed or recommended? Also would like to write to DVD, as I said am a complete newbie in this field so any basic advice would be appreciated
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A fast HDD is pretty much essential, SSD if your budget will stretch to it. For video you should ideally have two hard drives, one for storing your video files and another for your scratch disk (used for storing temporary files) but most laptops come with only one drive. You might want to invest in a USB3 external drive which should be fast enough to serve as a scratch disk.
A big screen will help A LOT. 17" should be a minimum. My old i5 is only 15.6" and it's very restricting. I must get my main laptop working again!
I would also look for a laptop with NVIDIA graphics for reasons that will become apparent.
In terms of software I can only recommend Adobe Premiere Pro (£17/month) as it's all I use. I've tried other free programs and they are literally shit for what I need to do. However, depending on what you'll be editing, there may be other programs that suit your needs. The main reasons I prefer Premiere are because it's very easy to use (easy to learn too), is extremely powerful with more options than you can shake a stick at and it can take advantage of the CUDA cores in your NVIDIA chipset to decrease render times (and generally run smoother).
With all that in mind, I've found this which fits the bill quite nicely.
Does not make much difference if ssd or hdd really as editing is normally cpu bottlenecked. 8-16GB Ram is advisable
So go for fastest cpu you can get in your budget.
I mean, Premiere Pro @ £18/month might well be beyond his budget. It would be for most people.
We all know that if cost is unimportant then the best system/software bar none can be purchased, and for a pro situation a person is likely to do that. And declare it for tax purposes as well...
But for just a few home videos it's hardly justifiable to spend nearly £220 every year on software alone!
Sony Movie Studio HD at £30 seems to get good reviews. It has DVD authoring built-in.
Spend as much as possible!
Check out the Sony software on Youtube.
But after all the advice and online searches i am looking very closely at the Asus GL752VW mainly because this comes with 16GB Ram, would appreciate any comments as to wether this is a good choice and up to scratch?
Again many thanks for all the advice, but as i am mainly just editing home movies, at present anyway, then maybe a monthly payment for premiere pro would be a waste for what i would be using it so will definately have a close look at the sony movie studio.
Again i cant thank you all enough for the expert and practical advice for a complete newbie, and it is all very much appreciated
Now that I know it will only be home movies you'll be editing, I can agree with Oilman that you won't really need and SSD. However, in my line of work I would. Try playing multiple ProRes 4K streams at the same time from an HDD and you'll wish you'd picked a different occupation.
The laptop you mentioned will be more than adequate for your needs.
This.
Laptops are really not the best computers for video editing and conversion since the CPU is hammered so much, and laptops are not very good at keeping cool. A tower PC is much better, and will last longer if you are going to use it a lot for video editing and conversion. With a tower you can add as much cooling as you want and multiple drives.
As Oilman says, HDD speed really doesn't matter for the most part, since your CPU will be maxed out anyway.
I will caveat that, however, by saying that if you are doing a lot of splicing of your video, that having an SSD for a scratch disk really does help you to slide through the file much smoother/faster (such as when looking for in/out mark points). But it doesn't make any difference to the video conversion which is essentially just CPU number crunching.
I actually did a comparison test when converting video with Handbrake and it made no difference whatsoever whether the files were read/written using a HDD or SSD.
I have a 256GB SSD for my OS and a 1TB SSD for my scratch drive. I also have 16GB RAM but I never go above 5 or 6GB in use even when processing large video files.
I use an i7 Windows laptop with 16gb, and Video Redo just for TV rips cutting out adverts.
Figure out which software package you want to use and if it can be accelerated by GPGPU then can pick a laptop with graphics card accordingly otherwise just get a laptop with a Core i7 skylake, job done.
Surely you can adjust brightness and colour? Even the basic Intel chipset software allows for that.
I think in real life the OP will be editing 1080p.
The output may very well end up in standard def on a DVD. Although if he is spending £1000 on a laptop it will likely have a BluRay burner.
My understanding is that also an HD file can be burnt to DVD to be played back only on a Bluray player