How about this $700 laptop for Video (amateur) editing??

[Fuster_Cluck]

My current Gateway is about 3 years old and heading down hill. Still works, just battery life is about 12 minutes instead of the 2+ hours when I first got her.

I am looking for a new laptop that will allow me to edit mini DV using Windows Movie Maker. I may upgrade to a better software down the road if I feel the need to. But, at this point I am very new to video editing and plan to stick with WMM for a while.

The new laptop will ONLY be used for burning cd's / dvd's, video editing, listening to music, personal finance with the Microsoft Office products, watching movies, photo shopping pictures, and possibly some k-pro datalogging. There will not be any Internet use on this pc!!

All files will be stored on an external drive leaving all the hard drive memory free for best performance.

I found this laptop while in Office Depot a little while ago. Really thinking about picking it up Saturday:

HP Pavilion DV9810US

Specs:

17" Brightview LCD screen ( )
2.0 GHZ, 2x512KB L2, 1600MHz FSB (not sure how fast this is, but should be fast enough)
3GB DDR memory ( )
160GB 5400-rpm SATA hard drive (Not the fastest)
Windows Vista Home Premium w/SP1
Lightscribe SuperMulti DVD drive (Lightscribe )
4 USB, 1 firewire, 1 S-video ( )
5-in-1 memory card reader ( )

On sale for $699.99 after rebates

I am going to bring the mini dv camera by and make sure the pc will recognize it if I decide to buy this machine

What do you guys think?

[05 tC]

A friend of mine bought that same laptop a few weeks ago and he really likes it.

[Fuster_Cluck]

Originally Posted by 05 tC

A friend of mine bought that same laptop a few weeks ago and he really likes it.

Good to hear

Do you know if he has successfully connected a mini dv camera to the pc?

Thanks for the info

[Rev ATARI]

For video editing, hell no

[Fuster_Cluck]

Originally Posted by Rev ATARI

For video editing, hell no

Care to elaborate

[SuperAkuma]

Originally Posted by Fuster_Cluck

Care to elaborate

If you are using Windows Movie Maker to edit your video you shouldn't have any problem with that setup. WMM sucks when it comes to editing but for the basic stuff it gets the job done.

When you upgrade to more advance program like Adobe Premier or Sony Vega, then you might experiance some slow down when you start working with large files(HD). But if you are editing non HD video files, you shouldn't have any problem with either.

So unless if you are working with HD video files, I don't see a problem with that setup. The only drawback to that setup is the slow hard drive and the shared video card memory. For $700 that is a good buy.

[Fuster_Cluck]

Originally Posted by SuperAkuma

If you are using Windows Movie Maker to edit your video you shouldn't have any problem with that setup. WMM sucks when it comes to editing but for the basic stuff it gets the job done.

Yeah, I always hear about Adobe Premier being used with the nicer videos I see. I also don't like the fact that you can not blur with WMM, unless I am just missing that feature

Originally Posted by SuperAkuma

When you upgrade to more advance program like Adobe Premier or Sony Vega, then you might experiance some slow down when you start working with large files(HD). But if you are editing non HD video files, you shouldn't have any problem with either.

Is a basic mini DV video camera considered HD? Or are you referring to those high end 1k+ cameras?

Originally Posted by SuperAkuma

So unless if you are working with HD video files, I don't see a problem with that setup. The only drawback to that setup is the slow hard drive and the shared video card memory. For $700 that is a good buy.

I picked the laptop up yesterday as well as a Radio Shack 4-4 pin firewire. Turns out the entire time the ebay firewire cable is the problem. I am editing videos on my old laptop using the RS firewire cable with no problems. I'm most likely going to return the HP. I don't even want to open it because I will most likely want to keep it. I really don't need it at this point and can use the $$$ somewhere else in life.....

Thanks for the feedback and any other you can offer on my Q's

[Rev ATARI]

Originally Posted by Fuster_Cluck

Care to elaborate

When exporting video “or rendering the video” to the final format you will be an old man when it gets done, well not really old but that 2 GHz dual core is going to take forever. The rendering time differences from say that AMD 2 GHz dual core compared to an Intel 2.40 GHz quad core could easily get into the hours.

Example my last computer had that CPU but I had a little more RAM
A 30 video would take me 3 or more hour to render
The new system i build “using a Intel Quad at 2.40 GHz will render the same video in about 15 min