[Paul M C]

Hi there

Wonder if I can ask a few questions to your more knowledgeable people? !!

Basically, I am toying with the idea of getting an HD camcorder - nothing fancy - just feel like I want to start shooting footage in HD.

Now, in order to edit this, I am going to need a more powerful laptop. Can anyone please advise what really are the minimum specs I should be looking out for in order to do this?

Once edited, how would I get the stuff on a blu-ray disc? Presumably not many laptops come with built in blu-ray recording do they?

.......Or would I be best storing edited, finished results on a HDD or something....

If anyone can provide me with any basic pointers, I'd be grateful. At the moment, I edit on my desktop pc using a version of Pinnacle and burning the results to a standard DVD-R.

Can I just ask a silly question: Could I keep, say, the original HD footage on a memory card or HDD or something and then edit and make the HD stuff SD and burn to a normal dvd-r disc? A bit pointless maybe, but just thinking about the best way to play this type of thing on the tv if I can't burn directly to a blu-ray?

Cheers for any advice....

[c4rv]

i5 with 4GB of RAM and plenty of disk space would be a good starting point. If you are doing a lot of editing then a large external screen would also be a good idea (you can then use the laptop display as second display). Most of the work is when you render the output (you should be used to this if you use pinnacle) so can just leave it running unattended.

You need to think about where you are going to view the footage. I have streamers on my TV so keep output footage on my central storage rather then burn to blu-ray.

And yes, there is not issue keeping the footage on memory card or HDD, just copy the whole directory structure and you can then reuse the card. And yes you can render to SD if you need to but keep original in HD for future use.

You can render to other formats, just depends on what you are going to use for playing the footage back.

[Paul M C]

Originally Posted by c4rv

i5 with 4GB of RAM and plenty of disk space would be a good starting point. If you are doing a lot of editing then a large external screen would also be a good idea (you can then use the laptop display as second display). Most of the work is when you render the output (you should be used to this if you use pinnacle) so can just leave it running unattended.

You need to think about where you are going to view the footage. I have streamers on my TV so keep output footage on my central storage rather then burn to blu-ray.

And yes, there is not issue keeping the footage on memory card or HDD, just copy the whole directory structure and you can then reuse the card. And yes you can render to SD if you need to but keep original in HD for future use.

You can render to other formats, just depends on what you are going to use for playing the footage back.

Thanks for the response, appreciated...

What software do you use for editing? As I say, I have an older version of Pinnacle on my desktop pc, but that seems to be prone to crashing quite a bit (Pinnacle that is, not the pc!)

I am sure I have read that Pinnacle crashes a fair bit, so just wondered if there were any decent (and not too expensive) alternative software suites that would do the job better?

When you say u have streamers on your tv, sorry, but what does this mean? I have just recently purchased a new Sony Bravia LED set which does connect wirelessly to my laptop quite easily so I play music from the laptop direct to the TV. Is this the sort of thing you mean?

[JulesandSand]

I use Pinnacle Studio 14 HD and don't find it crashes at all. I'm using an i5 laptop running W7 64 bit with 4 GB of RAM.

I find the software easy and intuitive to use (I've been using it since v9).

As said it's the rendering that takes the time, I output my video to a file for playback on a media player although the software will create Blu Ray output (I don't have a BR burner)

[RobinOfLoxley]

You may want to consider an external backup HDD too.

Ending up with a single final version on one DVD or BR disc is not good as long term storage.

Ideally transfer and edit on main HDD, backup to ext drive and make copy on optical disc.

Cloud services and photo/video sites can also be useful.

Home videos are irreplaceable. Multiple copies minimise the risk of loss.

[noise747]

More or less what been said above. you can get external blu-ray writers, not sure what they are like mind you, ebuyer have got a Samung external for around £90.


The thing is how much do you want to spend? software wise i recommend sony Vegas movie studio, it is a cut down version of Vegas and it is pretty good so i have been told, I use Vegas pro. Vegas movie studio have ways of burning video to disks.


The one reason I like it is because it is light on resources.

Memory is pretty important and processing power as well, but you can edit sd footage and then replace the Sd with HD when it comes to rendering, that is called proxy editing.


Most modern dual core laptops can handle HD editing as long as you only got one track, but you start using multiple tracks on the time line and they will complain, I got a AMD phenom 3.5 quad core with 8Gb of memory and if I edit more than four HD tracks it starts to complain a bit.

what sort of camcorder are you thinking of getting? i got a JVC HD Everio GZ-HM435, they don't make that model now, but the next one up, the 445 is good value for money at £170 from PC world at the moment, you may find it cheaper else where.

The great thing about it is the size, it is small and yet gives great video and sound quality. 40x optical zoom is good for the price, certainly for HD.

[Paul M C]

Thanks for all your responses, really appreciated.

I shall look at the newest Pinnacle or indeed the Vegas software shortly, thanks for the recommendations.

As for the camcorder, not sure really, price wise.....I guess around a couple of hundred. The JVC one you've linked to looks ok for the price, thanks, I might consider that one....

As I want to take it on hols to Florida, how much would you pay for a memory card and what is the biggest capacity (hours of recording) one card would hold?

Cheers again for your help!

[whoever,hey]

Regarding memory cards, i would buy a few. I wouldn't want to lose all my footage if one of them corrupted. My inlaws card corrupted and lost all his photos when he went to Oz, so when we went i took a few.

They are sooooo cheap now.

[c4rv]

I use pinnacle 15 HD as well and find it stable enough. I also have Vegas and its also fine, just been used to using pinnacle for years so familiar with it.

As mentioned make sure you back everything up.

Streamers are network devices that you attach to the TV to play back video from network location like your PC. If you have a smart TV then it may be able to playback HD files from a hard disk.

32GB memory card will hold around 2 1/2 to 3 hours of HD footage (make sure you get class 10 memory)

[Neda_Turk]

Editing full HD stuff takes the maximum EVERYTHING!

Therefore a laptop may be limited.

In Adobe Premier it uses the graphics processor to help with the final rendering (Which will always take many hours anyway unless it's a 30 second clip) and so having a graphics card that it will work with will help enormously.

So the best graphics card that you check that it works with the editing software you want to use, tons of memory and loads of hard drive space. - So you can see why it normally done on a desktop PC instead of a laptop.

Oh and add 100s of hours of your time in editing and waiting for it to render.

But it is rewarding!

[Blackjack Davy]

HD videos are usually huge in size so an external hard drive would be the best option unless you happen to have a laptop with a particularly large drive! Don't forget that you'll need a mininum of twice the size of the video you want to edit and preferably 3x - one for the original and one for the edited copy, and possibly one for demuxed elementary streams, etc.

[noise747]

Originally Posted by Paul M C

Thanks for all your responses, really appreciated.

I shall look at the newest Pinnacle or indeed the Vegas software shortly, thanks for the recommendations.

Vegas looks a bit different to other video editors as it don't really look like it should be on windows, but it is a great bit software.

As for the camcorder, not sure really, price wise.....I guess around a couple of hundred. The JVC one you've linked to looks ok for the price, thanks, I might consider that one....

As I want to take it on hols to Florida, how much would you pay for a memory card and what is the biggest capacity (hours of recording) one card would hold?

If you are taking it on hols, then it will be ideal as it is small to carry around, I take mine almost everywhere, it is always hanging on my belt loop.

I got a 16Gb card and that will hold 1 hour and 29 mins of top quality and 2 hours of quality below which is still pretty good.

As been said best to take loads of cards, also what ever camcorder you buy factor in a second battery into the budget as very few will last long than a hour. I have got to get one myself.

The camera can use SDXC cards, very large memory cards but they are expensive, so you are better off getting a few 16 or 32Gb cards, if you can get 32 at a decent price.

You can get a trial of Vegas from here it is the movie studio you are looking at, have a look here for what they offer and costs.

[Paul M C]

Originally Posted by noise747

Vegas looks a bit different to other video editors as it don't really look like it should be on windows, but it is a great bit software.


If you are taking it on hols, then it will be ideal as it is small to carry around, I take mine almost everywhere, it is always hanging on my belt loop.

I got a 16Gb card and that will hold 1 hour and 29 mins of top quality and 2 hours of quality below which is still pretty good.

As been said best to take loads of cards, also what ever camcorder you buy factor in a second battery into the budget as very few will last long than a hour. I have got to get one myself.

The camera can use SDXC cards, very large memory cards but they are expensive, so you are better off getting a few 16 or 32Gb cards, if you can get 32 at a decent price.

You can get a trial of Vegas from here it is the movie studio you are looking at, have a look here for what they offer and costs.

Many thanks for this, really appreciated.

Stupid question time again I'm afraid!!

If I went for this camcorder for example, whilst I would shoot in HD on memory cards (and maybe keep the memory cards as HD originals or transfer footage in HD to a HDD) I am thinking it might be easier all round if I edited a final copy for viewing purposes in SD.

So:

Are you able to connect the camcorder via yellow/white and red cables? Presumably not maybe? This is how I connect my current Sony mini tape dv camcorder to my dvd recorder...

If not, my DVD recorder has an SD card slot, so I guess I could pop the card in the recorder's slot and record the footage to the disc (normal DVD-R) but of course this would be SD quality....would it still look like decent SD (being HD in the first place??)

Presumably if this works, I could burn off a disc and import this say, into Pinnacle (this is the way with SD material I have been transferring to Pinnacle previously)....

Just really wanna make sure that although I would be recording in HD (and keep the original footage for future use in HD) that I can easily edit and put it back to SD for general viewing purposes if I want to give out discs to family/friends etc for playing in a standard dvd player?

Many thanks!

[TheBigM]

Originally Posted by Paul M C

Many thanks for this, really appreciated.

Stupid question time again I'm afraid!!

If I went for this camcorder for example, whilst I would shoot in HD on memory cards (and maybe keep the memory cards as HD originals or transfer footage in HD to a HDD) I am thinking it might be easier all round if I edited a final copy for viewing purposes in SD.

So:

Are you able to connect the camcorder via yellow/white and red cables? Presumably not maybe? This is how I connect my current Sony mini tape dv camcorder to my dvd recorder...

If not, my DVD recorder has an SD card slot, so I guess I could pop the card in the recorder's slot and record the footage to the disc (normal DVD-R) but of course this would be SD quality....would it still look like decent SD (being HD in the first place??)

Presumably if this works, I could burn off a disc and import this say, into Pinnacle (this is the way with SD material I have been transferring to Pinnacle previously)....

Just really wanna make sure that although I would be recording in HD (and keep the original footage for future use in HD) that I can easily edit and put it back to SD for general viewing purposes if I want to give out discs to family/friends etc for playing in a standard dvd player?

Many thanks!

This is how you should do things:
1) Shoot in HD and transfer that to your HDD via USB or firewire (whatever your camcorder comes with).

2) A good video editing package will create SD proxy files to make editing faster. What this means is that it generates a duplicate of the video but in SD. You make a number of edits to your HD video but it does preview renders in SD (which would be a lot faster). When it comes to the final render, then it does that to the HD video (this one takes time).

3) At the point of doing the final render, the software lets you select the target output: e.g. youtube, DVD, bluray, MP4 file etc. The software will automatically render the video to the quality suitable for the medium.

[Paul M C]

Originally Posted by TheBigM

This is how you should do things:
1) Shoot in HD and transfer that to your HDD via USB or firewire (whatever your camcorder comes with).

2) A good video editing package will create SD proxy files to make editing faster. What this means is that it generates a duplicate of the video but in SD. You make a number of edits to your HD video but it does preview renders in SD (which would be a lot faster). When it comes to the final render, then it does that to the HD video (this one takes time).

3) At the point of doing the final render, the software lets you select the target output: e.g. youtube, DVD, bluray, MP4 file etc. The software will automatically render the video to the quality suitable for the medium.

Thanks for this. So, I have an external 250gb HDD that I've used a little for some pictures etc. This connects to the laptop via USB. I think storing the original footage on the HDD would be better than keeping the memory cards, as looking for example at PC World's website (and I am sure you can get them cheaper elsewhere, I am just using this as a rough example) it said 16gb cards were £29.99. So, if I was to keep the original footage on the original cards, it would work out very costly.

So, how would the set up work exactly between the camcorder, laptop and external HDD? Would I plug the external HDD into the laptop first or could I just connect somehow the camcorder to the external HDD and transfer that way?

The camcorder I am looking at is this one linked kindly by a poster above:-

http://www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/jvc-gz...VigLink%20Inc~

My external HDD drive is an Iomega 250gb drive that connects via USB2 to the laptop (connects using 2 x usb ports into the laptop as doesn't need its own power supply from the mains).

Just another quick point: Once I've transferred the original footage from the camcorder's memory card to HDD (presume this is easy enough to do?), once the material is stored on the HDD, what's the best way of watching this in HD again?

Thanks again for the help, It's really appreciated...

[TheBigM]

Originally Posted by Paul M C

Thanks for this. So, I have an external 250gb HDD that I've used a little for some pictures etc. This connects to the laptop via USB. I think storing the original footage on the HDD would be better than keeping the memory cards, as looking for example at PC World's website (and I am sure you can get them cheaper elsewhere, I am just using this as a rough example) it said 16gb cards were £29.99. So, if I was to keep the original footage on the original cards, it would work out very costly.

So, how would the set up work exactly between the camcorder, laptop and external HDD? Would I plug the external HDD into the laptop first or could I just connect somehow the camcorder to the external HDD and transfer that way?

The camcorder I am looking at is this one linked kindly by a poster above:-

http://www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/jvc-gz...VigLink%20Inc~

My external HDD drive is an Iomega 250gb drive that connects via USB2 to the laptop (connects using 2 x usb ports into the laptop as doesn't need its own power supply from the mains).

Just another quick point: Once I've transferred the original footage from the camcorder's memory card to HDD (presume this is easy enough to do?), once the material is stored on the HDD, what's the best way of watching this in HD again?

Thanks again for the help, It's really appreciated...

Amazon sell 32GB cards for £14 so less than a quarter of the price of the card you quoted. Storing and editing video stored on an external hard drive is going to be slow unless it is a hard drive connected via eSATA or is USB3 etc and even then the controller in the external may make it slow.

I understand you have yet to buy a machine etc. A good video editing laptop is going to cost you £1,500 to £2,000. Using a Macbook Pro lets you use devices like the Elgato http://www.elgato.com/elgato/na/main...oduct1.en.html
You can get beefy windows laptops too but expect to be paying £1,000+ at least.

I very strongly advise you to buy a desktop to do your editing. You can buy a desktop that is good for editing from £500 upwards. If you want, then you can buy an ordinary laptop or tablet for £400 - £500 too if you need something to travel around with.

As you already have a desktop PC, you just need to upgrade your current one i.e. new processor, more RAM,new graphics possibly and new motherboard if needed.

You should really have hard disks connected internally like a 2TB disk connected via the latest SATA standard.

Some camcorders have inbuilt hard drives plus the memory card slots. The memory cards are only for recording onto from the camcorder and then you would transfer the video from the cards onto a hard drive. SD cards have limited numbers of writes (a few thousand) compared to a hard drive which is more like a few hundred thousand before they start to fail (on average).

[noise747]

Originally Posted by Paul M C

Thanks for this. So, I have an external 250gb HDD that I've used a little for some pictures etc. This connects to the laptop via USB. I think storing the original footage on the HDD would be better than keeping the memory cards, as looking for example at PC World's website (and I am sure you can get them cheaper elsewhere, I am just using this as a rough example) it said 16gb cards were £29.99. So, if I was to keep the original footage on the original cards, it would work out very costly.

So, how would the set up work exactly between the camcorder, laptop and external HDD? Would I plug the external HDD into the laptop first or could I just connect somehow the camcorder to the external HDD and transfer that way?

The camcorder I am looking at is this one linked kindly by a poster above:-

http://www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/jvc-gz...VigLink%20Inc~

My external HDD drive is an Iomega 250gb drive that connects via USB2 to the laptop (connects using 2 x usb ports into the laptop as doesn't need its own power supply from the mains).

Just another quick point: Once I've transferred the original footage from the camcorder's memory card to HDD (presume this is easy enough to do?), once the material is stored on the HDD, what's the best way of watching this in HD again?

Thanks again for the help, It's really appreciated...

Easy enough to move the footage from camcorder to a hard drive, you can either connect the camcorder to the computer via USb and drag the files across or take the card out and use a SD card reader which a lot of laptops comes with, make sure that can read SDHC, or even SDXC.

The folders you need to click to get to the files are from root.


Private--- AVCHD---BDMV and then Stream, it is organised like a blu-ray disk, so in theory you can just copy it to a bluray and it will work, never done it myself..

Once the video is on HDD if you want to view without editing then you can view via MS media player and VLC media player. You may be able to plug the drive into some blu-ray pl;ayers and they may play it, but I don't know.

if you going for blu-ray recorder as well, disks are still a bit pricey. Per gigabyte compared to DVDs they are fine, but one you use one for video, it works out expensive.

[Paul M C]

Originally Posted by TheBigM

Amazon sell 32GB cards for £14 so less than a quarter of the price of the card you quoted. Storing and editing video stored on an external hard drive is going to be slow unless it is a hard drive connected via eSATA or is USB3 etc and even then the controller in the external may make it slow.

I understand you have yet to buy a machine etc. A good video editing laptop is going to cost you £1,500 to £2,000. Using a Macbook Pro lets you use devices like the Elgato http://www.elgato.com/elgato/na/main...oduct1.en.html
You can get beefy windows laptops too but expect to be paying £1,000+ at least.

I very strongly advise you to buy a desktop to do your editing. You can buy a desktop that is good for editing from £500 upwards. If you want, then you can buy an ordinary laptop or tablet for £400 - £500 too if you need something to travel around with.

As you already have a desktop PC, you just need to upgrade your current one i.e. new processor, more RAM,new graphics possibly and new motherboard if needed.

You should really have hard disks connected internally like a 2TB disk connected via the latest SATA standard.

Some camcorders have inbuilt hard drives plus the memory card slots. The memory cards are only for recording onto from the camcorder and then you would transfer the video from the cards onto a hard drive. SD cards have limited numbers of writes (a few thousand) compared to a hard drive which is more like a few hundred thousand before they start to fail (on average).

I honestly had no idea I'd have to spend that much on a laptop for video-editing. Whilst I could stretch to that, as you say, I think I am gonna stick with the desktop and perhaps, as suggested, upgrade this a little.

So, just to summarise on one thing I am still, stupidly unclear about.

If I buy a new camcorder with SD memory card slot, take the footage in HD, presumably I can record this footage onto my DVD recorder (as I do at present) and burn it to a dvd-r disc BUT in SD obviously?

[TheBigM]

Originally Posted by Paul M C

I honestly had no idea I'd have to spend that much on a laptop for video-editing. Whilst I could stretch to that, as you say, I think I am gonna stick with the desktop and perhaps, as suggested, upgrade this a little.

So, just to summarise on one thing I am still, stupidly unclear about.

If I buy a new camcorder with SD memory card slot, take the footage in HD, presumably I can record this footage onto my DVD recorder (as I do at present) and burn it to a dvd-r disc BUT in SD obviously?

You could get away with doing it on a lower spec machine, but editing HD video would not be pleasant. It might be viable if you get software that makes the proxy files I mentioned. Most laptops have mobile processors not the full-fat desktop versions, they tend not to come with more than 4GB RAM and their hard drives are considerably slower than those on desktops.

DVD recorders (the kind made by panasonic and others) I think always record to the DVD-Video format which uses the MPEG-2 codec and a resolution of either 576p (PAL) or 480p (NTSC). Those are both SD resolutions.

If you are using video editing software and you select to output to DVD-Video, it will automatically downscale the video from HD to meet the DVD-Video spec and be suitable for playing in all DVD players.

Your PC, if it is relatively modern should be quite comfortable in editing SD video, it's just HD that is still tough.

[Orbitalzone]

You can download a 30 day full trial version of Pinnacle and Vegas studio.... I've used Pinnacle studio 9 for ages and although it crashes occasionally I like the overall functionality... however I've just trialled the Sony Vegas and it works well and is pretty cheap from Amazon depending on the version...but about £30 odd isn't bad for consumer HD software.

[Paul M C]

Originally Posted by TheBigM

You could get away with doing it on a lower spec machine, but editing HD video would not be pleasant. It might be viable if you get software that makes the proxy files I mentioned. Most laptops have mobile processors not the full-fat desktop versions, they tend not to come with more than 4GB RAM and their hard drives are considerably slower than those on desktops.

DVD recorders (the kind made by panasonic and others) I think always record to the DVD-Video format which uses the MPEG-2 codec and a resolution of either 576p (PAL) or 480p (NTSC). Those are both SD resolutions.

If you are using video editing software and you select to output to DVD-Video, it will automatically downscale the video from HD to meet the DVD-Video spec and be suitable for playing in all DVD players.

Your PC, if it is relatively modern should be quite comfortable in editing SD video, it's just HD that is still tough.

My current desktop edits fine in SD with an older version of Pinnacle (although the software crashes sometimes), so, if I shot in HD, bought a new version of Pinnacle (which I am used to) could I then comfortably edit and output to SD without the "HD" element interfering with the rendering or processing in any way? I would keep the HD un-edited original stuff for archiving purposes....

Thanks for all your replies so far - as I say, really appreciated!

[TheBigM]

Originally Posted by Paul M C

My current desktop edits fine in SD with an older version of Pinnacle (although the software crashes sometimes), so, if I shot in HD, bought a new version of Pinnacle (which I am used to) could I then comfortably edit and output to SD without the "HD" element interfering with the rendering or processing in any way? I would keep the HD un-edited original stuff for archiving purposes....

Thanks for all your replies so far - as I say, really appreciated!

I don't know if Pinnacle makes the SD proxy files. I don't think it does. Also Pinnacle has been unreliable for the last ten years. I would consider perhaps investing time to learn a better suite like Adobe Premiere Elements or Sony Vegas.

[Paul M C]

Originally Posted by TheBigM

I don't know if Pinnacle makes the SD proxy files. I don't think it does. Also Pinnacle has been unreliable for the last ten years. I would consider perhaps investing time to learn a better suite like Adobe Premiere Elements or Sony Vegas.

Does Sony Vegas definitely make SD proxy files?

If so, I guess this might be the one to go for.....

Thanks again for your help!

[noise747]

Originally Posted by Paul M C

I honestly had no idea I'd have to spend that much on a laptop for video-editing. Whilst I could stretch to that, as you say, I think I am gonna stick with the desktop and perhaps, as suggested, upgrade this a little.

You need a fair bit of power for HD editing and cheaper laptops can not cope very well. saying that my Old Acer twin core 2.3 can cope with one track of HD. but can't displaty it in Hd as the screen is not HD.

So, just to summarise on one thing I am still, stupidly unclear about.

If I buy a new camcorder with SD memory card slot, take the footage in HD, presumably I can record this footage onto my DVD recorder (as I do at present) and burn it to a dvd-r disc BUT in SD obviously?

If you mean the type of DVd recorder you stick under your TV, then no, as there is no way to connect the camcorder up to it unless the DVD recorder got HDMI.

if you mean a DVd burner connected tot he computer then yes after it is converted. if you edited the video in Vegas, then you can output in a lower quality.

[noise747]

Originally Posted by Paul M C

Does Sony Vegas definitely make SD proxy files?

If so, I guess this might be the one to go for.....

Thanks again for your help!

No, i don't think any video editor apart from may be avid. You got to convert the files your self.

Here is one way of doing it. He goes on a bit, but he gives you an idea how to do it. the video converter he uses is really good, been using it for ages myself.