Laptop for Editing

[John Rofrano]

I don’t have a particular model number recommendation (sorry) but if you are using Sony Vegas Pro, you want the fastest Core i7 or i5 processor you can find. As that review says, be careful of Core i7 laptops that are only 1.5Ghz. That’s not a lot of power per CPU (even though there are 4 of them). If you are editing HDV you should be OK, if you are editing AVCHD any laptop is going to be strained.

For Graphics you want an NVIDIA discreet graphics processor. The laptop you pointed to uses ATI which neither Sony nor Adobe support for GPU acceleration. You want a CUDA enabled NVIDIA graphics GPU so I would not get that laptop (nor a MacBook Pro if it has an ATI card).

You also want a 7200RPM hard drive of at least 500GB and at least 4GB of memory running Windows 7 64-bit (8GB is better).

Firewire is hard to find these days but still a great way to attach external storage. Of course, if you have a camera that requires firewire capture you’re gonna need it. If you don’t, and you select a laptop that has USB 3 or eSATA you should be OK. You just need an easy way to connect reliable, high bandwidth, external storage.

Hopefully someone will answer with the make and model they are using. I do all of my editing on my quadcore workstation and my laptop is just for mobility (which is why I run Ubuntu Linux on it). 😉

Laptops are not the best platform for editing HD and you will pay way, way more for a laptop that can edit HD then a desktop that can edit HD.

~jr

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

[Thomas Roberts]

John,

Thanks for your help on this one. I’m looking for a fast laptop for my Same Day Corporate edits we do.

Thanks,

T