video editing

[shaggs147]

Well it finally looks as if the laptop has given up, so its the perfect opportunity to upgrade to one that can edit the gopro videos relatively easily. I don't really want a Mac, or to pay silly money, but was wondering what sort of spec laptops the gang members were running to edit videos. Dual core, quad core, how much ram, if a dedicated video card was required..... etc etc etc.

Cheers,
Mark

PS ...... saw a second hand one for sale quite local with this spec ......Sony i5 Nvidea GT330m Gaming laptop 4gb 500gb Blueray 16.4" with webcam Hdmi. nvidea gt330m 1gb dedicated video memory+ upto 2gb shared full hd laptop 

Would that cope?

[patrick]

I replaced my desk top machine to cop with HD editing, got it from overclockers.co.uk  they are a good source of advice

my spec is briefly 

AMD A10-6800K Black Edition 4.10GHz (Socket FM2) APU Richland Quad Core    8Gb of ram, good -  but don't ask what - graphics card, 2 monitors and a blu ray writer


P

[shaggs147]

Cheers Patrick I'll check them out

[Kwikasfuki]

Mine is an Intel i7 quad core,12gb RAM, all editing it done on SSD drive. Graphics card is quite old - some NVIDIA one with a decent amount of RAM.

I custom build my PCs. This one I'm currently using was probably build around 2009/2010. I've only upgraded the HD to SDD in that time.

[Ros]

Hi,

In my humble opinion and experience, laptops will always be a little... not really designed for video editing.  Most laptops will need to be used on battery for extended periods, and so the design and power saving software will always be trying to throttle back your processor speed, and all the internals (processor, HDD, GFX etc.) will be geared to low power use, and not performance.

The bottleneck in most video editing, especially nowadays with the GoPro churning out gigabytes of data at a time, is the hard disk.  HD video editing will need some power if you don't want to be waiting all night for it to render, and plenty of RAM is necessary so that it doesn't keep trying to cache everything back to the hard disk.

Consider that the computer, whatever type it is, will be reading from the disk, writing to it at the same time, and if you have not got enough memory, it'll be doing that again on a swap file.

What do I do?

Desktop PC - which I built myself
Intel Core i7 3770
OCZ (can't remember exact model) SSD 512Gb <---  Operating system (along with program files etc.) and temp directory for video creation only.  This is the 1st key to speed and performance
2x 3TB Western Digital Red (in RAID array - anyway, will use these in a NAS when I can afford a decent one) to store all your eventual footage.. You'll need loads of space
16Gb RAM.  <--- I manually configure Windows 7 to NOT use caching at all.  There's plenty of room in there - no need for cache.  This is the second key to speed!
The i7 has on board HD 4000 graphics so don't need a gxf card with the mother board that I used.  However - be aware that the new GoPro software doesn't like it!

I think that's it.  All in about 1000 EUR about 1.5 years ago.  I used my existing 24" monitor and Keyb/mouse etc.  On board sound is sufficient.

It is SO FAST....  also, with all 8 threads going, the video rendering is pretty sharp too.

Anyway - if you have had a GoPro for any length of time, you'll realise by now that either you need to be extremely ruthless with what you keep and what you delete, or you need huge quantities of disk space!!

Anyway - hope this helps a bit.

Cheers

[shaggs147]

Cheers for the replies guys. Time to crowbar open the wallet me thinks 

[Andy]

Nothing fancy or new essential just takes longer :-( I use free Windows Live Movie Maker
http://www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/data-storage/hard-drives/network-hard-drives/720_7067_70072_xx_xx/xx-criteria.html

I'd suggest just dragging one MP4 file at a time into Movie Maker especially if you have a basic PC to prevent freezing or crashing and save as you go.

[Lonewolf]

I have one of the go pro black 3+ models and it is a demanding piece of hardware when it comes to video editing.


However before you go spending silly amounts of money it could simply be that your video editing software is not compatible with the go pro. I would suggest that in the first instance you have a go at editing the GOPRO footage with Go Pro's very own and free video editing software.


The last video I did which was of Charlie and I in the Cotswolds was created with Go Pro's video software which is downloadable free from their site and I think that turned out ok.

[shaggs147]

Thanks for the replies Andy and Steve. Unfortunately the old laptop is past it. It gave good service for a good few years, but struggled like hell with footage from the gopro. I found the movie maker software to be good though, and easy to use. Steve, I remember you getting a new laptop recently, what spec did you go for? I have the Gopro 3 silver, so probably won't need one quite to your spec.

[Lonewolf]

It's a year old now is the laptop so it's not cutting edge technology but this is what it says, it means bugger all to me though.


Processor Intel (R)  Core (TM) i7-3632QM CPU @ 2.20GHz    2.20GHz


Installed memory (RAM) 8.00 GB


System Type 64 bit operating system x64 based processor.


Make and model wise it's a Sony Vaio, with blu ray writer and a Radeon graphics card.

Hope that is of some use to you.

[shaggs147]

Yeah that's great thanks. That's the sort of spec I've been looking at so it gives me a good ball park figure to start with and I know what'll cope with the editing.

[Andy]

It's a year old now is the laptop so it's not cutting edge technology but this is what it says, it means bugger all to me though.


Processor Intel (R)  Core (TM) i7-3632QM CPU @ 2.20GHz    2.20GHz


Installed memory (RAM) 8.00 GB


System Type 64 bit operating system x64 based processor.


Make and model wise it's a Sony Vaio, with blu ray writer and a Radeon graphics card.

Hope that is of some use to you.

Sounds like my Sony Vario Laptop. Here's the dyno chart :-) i7 processors are pretty quick, i.e. faster than i3 & i5 :-) but I must admit I normally use my Acer Revo RL100 "desktop" for quick editing even if it is "slow".

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i7-3632QM+%40+2.20GHz

[Kwikasfuki]

Thanks for the replies Andy and Steve. Unfortunately the old laptop is past it. It gave good service for a good few years, but struggled like hell with footage from the gopro. I found the movie maker software to be good though, and easy to use. Steve, I remember you getting a new laptop recently, what spec did you go for? I have the Gopro 3 silver, so probably won't need one quite to your spec.

what's your budget?

[shaggs147]

Don't want to go go too mad on it, maybe 5 - 600.

[Kwikasfuki]

Don't want to go go too mad on it, maybe 5 - 600.

How about a second hand one? Something like this:
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/ZOOSTORM-DESKTOP-PC-CORE-i7-3-9GHz-16GB-RAM-1TB-HDD-GT630-4GB-WIN-7-RN7088-/331202404709?pt=UK_Computing_DesktopPCs&hash=item4d1d33a165

Add on a SSD drive and it will be more than capable