What to buy, laptop etc.

[Iain Mackinnon]

I also considered a laptop for my editing and as i was using a G5 i just phoned apple.
The dude recommended (as you’d expect) the most expensive thing going.
On Apple’s website if you haven’t seen it already is a builder feature that let’s you select what you want in your computer.
The only real bit of advice i would give is that when eslecting drives, speed (RPM) is REALLY REALLY important. I found to my horror after buying a 320Gb drive at 5400RPM that it is virtually useless for any type of Audio let alone Video editing.
I believe the minimum speed is 7200 and i know you can get 1500RPM for desktops these days but I believe the Solid state drives are the way to go for laptops, but can’t be sure. anyone?
Sorry can’t be of more help.

I used to spend my time wondering, now it’s all used up rendering.

[Kent Stipp]

greetings,
couple of things you want to consider when you are thinking of your MacBook Pro. you say edit on the road, well if we are talking editing while flying, the 17″ is out unless you sit in business or first class, the machine is bigger than your fold down tray. Also look at what will you be editing?
Now I edit on the road alot and I have the previous gen 15″ 2.6 ghz with a sata card for external drives and an IoHD. it works great for me. I have dealt wit an east coast company in the past and they have set me up right, might want to drop them a line at http://www.mbsdirect.com
hope some of this helps.

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[Ed Dooley]

I owned a 17″ PowerBook for a couple of years, taking it all over the world so I could do rough edits. I loved the size, and I didn’t think the 7 pounds was that much more than the 1.3 pounds less of a 15″ (or somewhere around that difference). So when I recently bought another MBP, I started thinking the same thing……but….. I tried a 15″ with FCS, and I don’t notice any difference in available screen space. It’s smaller, of course, but without a 17″ next to it, it’s not noticeable at all. I disagree about the hard drive. The most important thing about hard drives is how full they are. A half-full 5,400RPM drive will outperform a nearly full 7,200RPM drive, and both are perfectly suitable for video and audio editing. A 7,200 is certainly faster, but not necessary, especially if you’ll be running off the battery for any amount of time (the 7,200 will suck more juice). But, I would suggest that the most important thing is to use an external drive for editing anyway. Depending on what format/codec you’ll be editing in, a single drive (either FW800 or SATA with an Express Card) will work fine for HDV/DV, or a 2 drive RAID0 setup (they even have cool little 2-2.5″ notebook striped arrays in a little case, some even run on bus power). Max out the RAM and you’ll have a fast portable system.
My travel system (only when I really need it) is a MBP, 2 drive RAID0 case, and an LCD combo VGA/video monitor, which fits in the laptop case (NTSC/PAL/component/s-video/composite/VGA). It works as a field monitor, a 2nd editing monitor, and a rough video monitor.
Ed