Is single core and 2GB RAM acceptable?

[John Rofrano]

[Jason Emery] “O am concerned though that if I buy this £280 laptop I have my eyes on it may run Sony Vegas even worse than how I currently do on my PC. Can somebody explain how dual or quad core helps? I’ve always though that the idea behind it would be that i could multi-task, making it possible to go on the internet whilst a video os rendering. What of I don’t want to multitask, surely only more RAM would be handy then so why do people recommend extremes to me (such as 6 processors).”

It has nothing to do with you multi-tasking and everything to do with Vegas multi-tasking. If you are working in HD, the minimum requirement from Sony is a dual-core. I would not edit HD without at least a quad-core. Vegas will use all of the cores that you can give it and divide it’s tasks up among the cores to work faster. For example, it might process multiple frames at the same time on different cores or process video on one core and audio on the other. I wouldn’t plan on editing HD on a cheap laptop. It’s not going to work very well unless you are doing SD.

You also need to understand the different ratings of laptop processors. A 2Ghz T5000 series is slower than a 2GHz T6000 series, which is slower than a 2Ghz T8000 series, which is slower than a 2Ghz T9000 series. All of those processors are 2Ghz Core 2 Duo yet the low end T5xxx T6xxx are only good for surfing the web and you’ll need a T8xxx or T9xxx series for serious video editing.

Once again, if you are just working in SD you might get by with less but video editing is a demanding workload on a computer.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Jason Emery]

Thank you for your reply. I don’t know what you mean by “working in HD”. I have a Flip camcorder which records in 720p making it high definition and Sony Vegas is able to render that. I’ve never learnt how to edit settings of the final rendered version, that’s one of the many things I need to learn.

But if you go on my YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/jjbdude) you will see a lot of the videos I’ve made on my single core pc. I only plan to make simple videos like that with little fancy transition editing, all with a length of under 10 minutes.

[John Rofrano]

[Jason Emery] “I don’t know what you mean by “working in HD”. I have a Flip camcorder which records in 720p making it high definition and Sony Vegas is able to render that.”

HD is either 1080i or 720p. If you are making very simple videos in 720p you might be OK. If you are doing a lot of cutting to music, you will definitely need a Dual Core to get smooth playback. You should also be aware that a single core laptop will not be as powerful as a single core desktop. You will be stepping down in performance and as I said, if you are buying a cheap laptop with a low-end CPU, you will have a hard time even with 720p.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Dave Haynie]

Not that there’s anything wrong with buying a new PC, but if your prospective laptop is a potential downgrade, that won’t help your video work. Given the pretty good free anti-virus tools available, not to mention some excellent paid-for tools (I run ESET’s NOD32 on my main PC), there’s really no excuse for getting a virus. Adware can be pretty well cleansed using tools like AdAware or Spybot, both free as well.

And if you have an install disc, you can wipe just about everything by doing a clean install of Windows. You’ll have to re-install your programs as well, and there’s time involved, but shouldn’t be cost. Most fairly modern Windows PCs have a built-in means to repair or restore Windows.

My kids have a spare PC, ran me $8.00 at a yard sale, because the former owner found themselves loaded with virus and adware programs, and the local Big Box wanted over $100 to fix it. So they bought a new computer, and put this one up for cheap (only really useful for internet anyway, 800MHz Pentium 3 or some such, but hey, for less than two “Starbucks”, not too bad).

-Dave