New system purchase, suggestions?

[Preferred Pilot New York]

Hello all, I am sure this question has been asked ad nauseam, however my searches have not provided the answers I seek.  Can you spare me a few minutes of your time, and advice??  Thank you in advance!

I have a dell laptop, and the full 2017 adobe cc suite subscription - been a subscriber for 2 years now.  I mainly use PP and AE, with a little LR in there too.  But I am always learning (mainly from you kind folks)...and as you have probably guessed, no matter how powerful my dell SSD 16gb laptop is, it just can't handle the work...and my last project has pushed me to the limit of my frustration, especially considering how much I pay for adobe - seems a waste if I can't use it to its (and my) potential.

Now, let's also keep in mind I am not a professional like many of you here, this is a hobby that I use 99% for drone footage I capture for myself and clients.  I have already spent a pretty penny on the drone, and accessories over the years...but truth be told, I have already made back my initial drone investment...so we are good there, at least as far as the wife is concerned.  But now I find I am wasting my own time...trying to scrub through footage, waiting...and waiting...for renderings and other formatting to complete...all the while my laptop is running at 100% - and piping hot...surely I should take the next step, and get a proper machine for this work load.

I think my next investment...in this hobby...should be, and rightfully so, a machine to properly, and in a timely fashion, handle my workload...I am a windows guy through and through.  I am sure I could be easily talked into a beautiful $3k tower and 37" monitor...but let me just say that I am not oozing with cash, and I live in an apartment...space is a consideration...likely, whatever I get will live on our unused dining room table. 

I'd like to say my complete budget...for everything, would be about $1600.  There is wiggle room...but let see if you fine folks could help me with that budget in mind.

Thank you all for listening...I will be quiet now and just learn....thank you!

[Bill_Gehrke]

Well maybe someone will move this to the Premiere Hardware forum were you would get more attention.

Please give us information on your laptop so maybe we could solve your problem.  I personally do a lot of editing on this 3-year old laptop.

What model number

What is your disk drive situation?

What is the processor?

How much memory?

What GPU?

Laptops always require you have it on AC power as they slow down immensely to save battery power

[Preferred Pilot New York]

I have a Dell XPS 15" laptop w 16GB (2x8) i7 w 512SSD. 

Most of my footage is 4k coming from the drone.  The playback stutters so much, that its nearly impossible to do any type of smooth playback.  I am now doing some 3d work in after effects, and that too is struggling...not sure if its the software, the footage, or operator error...I imagine its all 3. 

The laptop has served me well, and I will def be keeping it...I would just like to start looking for a tower.  And with that, I could use some guidance for specs.   And yes, now I see my folly...this should clearly have been put in the hardware forum..my bad.

thanks Bill!!

[Peru Bob]

Moved to the Hardware Forum.

[Preferred Pilot New York]

Thanks Bob, I got your email, thank you...as you can see above, this is my query, think you might be willing to make some suggestions? 

Ideally, what I am doing now is editing clips of footage, primarily for social media accounts - so the finished product is usually no longer than a minute or two...but also creating promo clips for my own tiny business...also editing photos in LR....

The footage is large, as I shoot in 4k mainly.  And...I am new to this.  Last night I learned how to rotate 3D text in After Effect...that was after 2 days of trying to get After Effects to properly analyze my 50 second clip using the 3D Camera Track function.

Anyway, thanks one and all!

[Peru Bob]

phantom4me  wrote

Thanks Bob, I got your email, thank you...as you can see above, this is my query, think you might be willing to make some suggestions? 

I'm not as expert as Bill and others here. Please answer Bill's questions:

Please give us information on your laptop so maybe we could solve your problem.  I personally do a lot of editing on this 3-year old laptop.

What model number

What is your disk drive situation?

What is the processor?

How much memory?

What GPU?

[Bill_Gehrke]

This is a start on the info we need but there are lots of variations to that  "Dell XPS 15" laptop w 16GB (2x8) i7 w 512SSD."

If you do not have more detail we cannot help you much.  We can tell you how to get complete data if that helps.

On this laptop I have a GoPro 4K clip from my son's drone.  I put it in the timeline 3 times the first instance is original format, the second has lens distortion correction and the last clip has warp stabilization .  It plays perfectly in Premiere 11.1 without the loss of any frames from playback.

Help us help you.

[Preferred Pilot New York]

Okay, thank you!  Yes, the limit of my skillset is now apparent, I can't even get you simple figures - please bare with me:

16GB Dual Channel DDR3L 1600MHz (8GBx2)

NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M 2GB GDDR5

512GB Solid State Drive

High Definition Audio with Waves MaxxAudio Pro

Intel(R) Dual Band Wireless-AC 7260 @ 5GHz + Bluetooth 4.0

Dell SRV AOAC/Intel Smart Connect Technology

4th Generation Intel Core i7-4702HQ processor (6M Cache, up to 3.20 GHz)

15.6 inch LED Backlit Touch Display with Truelife and QHD+ resolution (3200 x 1800) with Camera

91 WHr, 6-Cell Battery (integrated)

I found my order slip from 2013 - so I just copied and pasted.

I am absolutely grateful for all your help!!!  I hope I answered the question you needed answered....thank you!

[Bill_Gehrke]

Great if you ever what even more detail down load an App called Speccy.

Your processor is just a slight bit slower that my i7-4700HQ so we now know that you should be doing better than you are.  One major difference is that you only have one storage device that 512GB SSD, you really should invest in a Samsung T3 portable SSD for a second storage device.  Searching I do believe that you have 2 each USB3.0 ports.  This is not as fast as an internal SATA III SSD but it is about 3 times faster than a hard disk drive.  I use these portable SSD's regularly.

My laptop has a GTX 765M which is slightly better than your GTX 750M but that probably is insignificant.

How many processes do you have running?   Here is my system with 76 processes running before I fire up Premiere.

You may have to tune that Dell to get rid of processes stealing your CPU non-necessary processes and also robbing you of memory.  Here is a tuning guide it is slightly out of date but you can work around that   Vendors like Dell and many others load up many unnecessary programs that automatically start up and waste your resources.

[Preferred Pilot New York]

Wow...that's a long list there on the the tuning guide...I have lots of work to do.  Funny enough, a friend of mine put the GodMode on my laptop recently...haven't touched it.

Thanks for this Bill, will get to work!  Ultimately though, I would ideally like a desktop system at home to work on my projects.  When you have time, I'd love to know what your thoughts are on must have's and not necessary's

Would you steer clear of name brand like Dell, and get a custom built desktop from some other vendor...

Again, I'd like to say I have 2K and under to spend. 

Thank you very kindly for all your time you have already invested in me.  I promise I will not waste your insight, all the above will be followed through with. 

[RoninEdits]

adk and puget are good/ok vendors, but i can't recommend safe harbor with the parts they list on their website.

[johnb26924339]

You might consider working with smaller video size since you're a drone hobbyist. I have a Mavic Pro and started shooting in 2K and rendering in 1080p, realizing that most folks are never going to see the difference and the trade-off in speed/file size is well worth it. To be honest, I think the raw footage looks better in 2K than 4K anyway.  I actually put my system together to handle 4K because my laptop wasn't cutting it and despite the fact my system will cut through 4K like butter, I have become a big fan of these other formats. Just some random thoughts from a fellow flyer... 

[Bill_Gehrke]

I know you want to get that new computer.  There are three video editing qualified computer integrator's that I trust

• ADK
• Puget Systems
• Safe Harbor

EDIT

One neat feature of my suggestion that I use all the time is by having all the Project files and media files on the Samsung T3, is that it will be extremely easy to move your project from your laptop to your new desktop and vice versa.  I do my editing basically on the laptop and then take it to the desktop for exporting and/or burning to disc.