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Early feedback using AXP on an approved laptop
Wanted to give you guys my first blush on running the latest version of Xpress Pro on an HP nw9440 laptop.
What a screamer!!!
Okay, back to editing. :-p
No, seriously, I am impressed with the flagship from the HP line of approved machines. It’s running the Intel T2600 @ 2.16GHz (Core 2 Duo) processor, the NVIDIA Quadro FX1500M video card, 2GB of RAM and an 80GB 7200 RPM internal drive.
I’m using local firewire drives now, and experiencing no playback problems with DV, DVCPRO and DVCPRO HD at 1080 24p. I don’t have my Mojo attached yet, but that’s one of the next things to try. Full Screen Playback looks great on the laptop itself with native resolution at 1900 X 1200 on its 17-inch screen. I’ll be attaching a second monitor soon to verify that there are no hiccups, as this will be my setup for location editing.
I was working with the HP nx9600 for the past 18 months or so, and I never had a single issue…until recently. I needed to do a reinstall of Avid and the machine totally locked up. I was not able to get past the audio drivers installation. I worked with Avid and we tried a lot of things, but could not seem to get beyond the strange problems. Even though it was the top-of-the-line machine when I bought it, I recognized that it was getting a little long in the tooth when I would go to edit DVCPRO HD footage. It still edited DV (with lots of layers and real time effects), and that was me banging on it hard all day for short-form and really long-form work. Well, until the latest reinstall…
I kinda miss the glossy screen on the nx9600, as HP has chosen to go back to the matte finish with the nw9440. But I think I’ll appreciate matte all over again in less-than-perfect editing environments on the road. Oh, and the nw9440 is a bit thinner and slightly lighter to carry. The power supply is a brick, but the nx9600 power supply was crazy big.
The nx9600 will still be a terrific graphics machine for me. I’ll still send my work over to it for encoding if I need to continue editing.
Regards,
Joe Womble
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4 Replies
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Glad to hear there’s a laptop that can handle that footage, and off a firewire drive no less! As much as I love our desktop machines at work, when I end up buying a system for home use I thought about a laptop–the portability factor alone makes it worth extra thought. One question–can the laptop output to a second monitor so you have a 2 monitor setup at home, then laptop only when on the road?
Michael.
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Yes, it can. I have done it a lot with my nx9600 (to a Dell 24″). What I need to try is the same setup with this laptop to see if it drops frames, etc., when editing DVCPRO HD.
Regards,
Joe Womble
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I use the same laptop with a second monitor no problem. It’s not two separate monitors. The laptop monitor with a second 19″.
The whole setup is very impressive. I’m new to Avid since August of last year. This laptop is my first experience with Avid. I also have the analog Mojo to feed a Sony High Rez Bcast monitor and a couple of Klipch audio monitors. I can’t say enough about that setup. I’m itching to add a Bella keyboard to see if that set up will work with the laptop. The laptop is actually faster with After Effects than my G5 D2.5 Mac.
I import XDCam files at 4x real time. Deck control with my Beta SP deck is flawless. Batch digitizing works very well. Multi camera is very sweet. If my clients don’t look closely they would never know I was using a laptop. They’re always loking at the 20″ Sony.
At this point I’m using 2 LaCie drives to edit mostly DV25. I am having difficulty importing 25Mb HD XDCam files for some reason. Not enough experience with Avid to know what the problem is.Beam me up. Kirk out!
Al J. Marschke
BluMars Media
Pittsburgh, PA -
One more thing. I use it regularly with a Firestore for quick turnaround programing. The Firestore can capture Avid OMF DV25 in realtime. Drag and drop up-to 3 hours of footage instantly using the Firestore as the external drive. At that point I master to a DSR 1500 via 1394 with no problem.
Al J. Marschke
BluMars Media
Pittsburgh, PA
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