• Avid Media Composer

  Total newbie questions

  Posted by Chris Poisson on January 14, 2007 at 3:32 pm

  Hey all,

  I’m about to teach a class in editing at a community center, and am trying out Avid Free DV as the NLE we may use. Free was good, followed by cross-platform, since I am a Mac guy.

  I’m trying to get up to speed on the PC side though, and have downloaded Free DV to an old laptop my wife gave me. It has a 12.5″ screen, and even though I have a 17″ monitor hooked up to it from the VGA port, when I launch Avid I get an alert about minimum screen height in pixels, it wants 768.

  So I guess my first question is, can a laptop this small somehow be used with this software and if so, how. Also, if I do get it to work, what would be a suitable hard drive solution to use with it? I have a few 250 gig LaCie drives sitting around which I could re-format, although I should add that the laptop does not have a Firewire bus, only USB. Which may complicate things as far as capture, I have two DV decks and two Firewire cameras.

  I guess my last question is, if I can’t use this rig, what laptop would you recommend as a minimum? Cost is a concern. Thanks in advance!

  Chris Poisson replied 19 years, 7 months ago 2 Members · 2 Replies
• 2 Replies

• 

  Jon Zanone

  January 14, 2007 at 6:06 pm

  Are you looking to teach on this PC or just learn? If you are teaching, I’d definitly use what Avid recommends (https://www.avid.com/products/xpresspro/specs.asp#pc).

  If you are trying to learn, then I’d suggest getting as close to the specs as possible. Keep in mind, you’ll need firewire; You won’t be able to capture footage via USB, unless it’s P2 (which is more of a transfer process).

  Hope this helps!

  Jon
• 

  Chris Poisson

  January 14, 2007 at 6:32 pm

  Hey Jon,

  Thanks, that’s helpful.

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