Need Cheap Laptop For Video Editing

[jarenh24979135]

Hopefully this is not an oxymoron.

I will be going overseas in the near future, and I will need a laptop that can handle editing 1080p HD video from my Nikon D7000. Is this possible to do without spending more than $800?

I looked at Premier CS5's minium requirements, but I don't really know what to make of it.

I'm not very tech savy so I'm trying to understand  what the specs on the laptop mean as far as tangible performance. For instance if I bought a laptop with an i5 processor, a GeForce GT 540M  graphics card and 4 gigs of ram would that be enough to run CS5  effectively with my camera footage.

If not, what specific things would I need to improve and by how much? What would be the ideal set up, what would be a doable/efficient setup, and what would be one that just barely meets the requirments? What kind of experience would I get from each one?

Any information would be much appreciated.

[jarenh24979135]

Yeah, I looked into that chart- it's very helpful. I fall into the "easy" category as I'll be working on my d7000 footage. It says there is a minium speed for 7200. I don't really know what that means exactly, but I will be doing most of my work thorugh two exteranl drives. That make a difference? 

[Harm_Millaard]

D7000 footage is H.264 footage and thus falls in the category of AVCHD-like codecs. Difficult codecs, making for the highest system requirements.

Two external disks is pretty much impossible, because AFAIK there are no notebooks with two eSATA connections, only one. You want to have 7200 RPM eSATA drives for editing, not USB2 or FW400 because they are too slow. Keep in mind that D7000 footage is highly compressed and requires a lot of temporary space while editing and if your memory is limited, requires the pagefile quite often.

[RjL190365]

Harm,

I stand corrected. I did not pay attention to several details, especially screen resolution. Adobe requires a minimum vertical resolution of 900 pixels and a minimum horizontal resolution of 1280 pixels. Unfortunately, the two cheap laptops fall short on vertical resolution.

So in other words, Premiere Pro CS5 or CS5.5 will not even install on these two laptops.

[jarenh24979135]

It won't even install? What if I have the laptop hooked up to a monitor? Are either of these laptops even capable of running Premier CS5? They the most powerful I can find for the money, is there something I can sacrafice If i have to?

[RjL190365]

Having a laptop connected to a (most likely stationary) monitor defeats the very purpose of a laptop: The use anywhere where there is no AC (mains) power.

[jarenh24979135]

As I said earlier.

I need the laptop because I will be going over seas for a year- On A Plane- and then I will be coming back. During this time I will have my d7000 and I will be doing lots of photo work and some video. Clearly I'm not going to be lugging a desktop back and forth over a plane. Once I am there however I will have my own appartment where I will be able to work in a stationary place.

Unless it's cheaper to buy a desktop and shipt it back and forth, Laptop will have to be my best bet.

When I am doing my photos and video I wiould like to have it hooked up to a monitor. It's more accurate in rendering brightness and color. And you can get pretty good deals on monitors these days. All I need to know is if I will be able to run Premier CS5 on a laptop with an external monitor that meets the resolution standard even though the laptop screen itself does not.

[Alan_Craven]

I have just bought a Sony Vaio VPCF13M8E/B, which has a 1600x900 15" screen and an NVidia graphics card with 1GB memory.  It has a 1.73 GHz i7 processor and 4 GB of RAM.  It has a firewire port and a single eSATA.  I can use 2 extra eSATA drives with an ExpressCard.  there are also 2 USB 3 ports.

The weak point is the hard drive - a 500 GB, 5400 rpm type.  There is no place for a second internal drive.  There are designs on the internet for replacing the optical drive with a second hard drive.  I might try a hybrid Seagate Momentus 7200 rpm drive at some point.

The graphics card provides acceleration with the standard hack, and I can edit reasonably well on this with Premiere CS5, BUT I am doing simple edits with 1440x1080 50i HDV.  I think it would be pretty slow going with 1080p HD from your Nikon.

The Vaio is available for around £800 here in the UK.

[jarenh24979135]

nobody? Nothing? Bump.

[Jeff Bellune]

There probably aren't too many folks who deliberately bought a laptop that was under-specced, only to attach an external monitor of the proper resolution to see if they could install Premiere Pro CS5x.

I wouldn't expect an answer any time soon.  But then again, who knows?

-Jeff

[jarenh24979135]

I'm new to video, but I have been doing photography for a long time now. Anyone who does any type of visual work on a laptop screen is not going to get accurate rendition of their material. All i want to know is if it's possible to achieve a basic level of editing using PPcs5 on a laptop for under 850$. If not, what specific areas are noted as the problems, how will their effects be experienced, is there a way to compromise.

I am NOT looking to build a work station. And the vibe I get from this forum is that you either get the work station or go home. I have read other posts on this topic and it seems to be the same answer all around, no no no. If I was going to do this legit, I would get an apple desktop and go to town. And not even bother asking people questions. I might not even bother with Adobe. But my circumstances are what they are, my budget is what it is, and so my quesiton remains. Is there a way to do it. 

[Harm_Millaard]

Have a look at a notebook that may be outside your budget range, 'ernestoaksu' in the PPBM5 Benchmark

You will find it near the bottom of the list around rank 380 of the around 400 systems. It is about 23 times slower than a fast machine.

It is a Sony VPCEB3Z1E notebook, but may not be in the list of available models anymore.The closest I could find was the VPCF13Z1E/B @ € 1.600.

If you want to shave off more money, while still meeting minimum graphics requirements, which means 1600 x 900 effectively or better, and do concessions on memory, CPU, and disk, accept that that notebook will be as slow as molasses in winter, say 50 - 80 times slower than a fast machine. OTOH, if you don't mind that, your stay abroad will look much shorter.

[Alan_Craven]

I made a suggestion for a cheap laptop in post 26, but you appear to have ignored it!

Harm has suggested the same system in the previous post.  For video editing, this is probably about as cheap as it gets!