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What kind of computer do I want here?
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My wife wants a laptop of her own. Her main requirement is that it be able to edit video handily. Home movies and segments for her cooking blog mostly.
A little notebook from Dell has the right price - but I don't know anything about computer hardware or video software. I've heard Macs are supposed to be indispensable for this kind of thing, but they cost a thousand dollars and I can't tell if the people telling me that she needs one are people who do much bigger and more complicated video projects.
Any thoughts from the local techies?
A little notebook from Dell has the right price - but I don't know anything about computer hardware or video software. I've heard Macs are supposed to be indispensable for this kind of thing, but they cost a thousand dollars and I can't tell if the people telling me that she needs one are people who do much bigger and more complicated video projects.
Any thoughts from the local techies?
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This may be the crux of the thing.
On the one hand, uncertainty that it will be unable to handle the load.
On the other, it's not like she cares if the stuff she's working with is state of the art. I'm sure she'd be happy to work with, like, 2006 level software. So the question is - can today's cheapo equipment handle 2006 software?
If you want to throw down a price range people here might be able to suggest more specifically. I know there are Windows laptops out there that can do video processing like a champ, but they might be above what you want to spend.
I don't think I'd recommend an Apple laptop simple because, for what they are, they're overpriced. You can get comparable performance for a lot less if you shop around for a Windows machine.
So yeah. What price range are you looking at?
Somewhere between the two.
You might also check to see if Best Buy has the HP DV6-2088DX (it might be DV4) still in stock. It was a Black Friday/weekend burst sku that will probably still be in stock. It had 8gb of RAM and a 500gb HDD for $699 and there was a model under that (also a burst sku) that had 6gb of RAM and a 320gb HHD for $599.
:edit: It's actually on sale right now, and there's also a 15% off coupon, USP15SVEBIG. That takes it down to $674. The only spec I'd suggest bumping up would be the RAM, to 4 gigs, which would add $30 to the price.
In fact, you would be hard pressed to find a desktop that could do it for only 500.
If your price range is really that low, then I am a major proponent of the Dell refurb outlet, outlet.dell.com
which will get you a decent discount on some average hardware..
we also talk about other random shit and clown upon each other
That coupon's only valid for today too, by the way.
Given all that, I'd recommend stepping down to a Lenovo SL410. You can get it with a Core 2 Duo processor (this is the most important aspect as far as video editing goes) and 2GB of RAM with a free RAM slot open. It's onsale for $599, or $539.10 if you use the USPTHINKHOLIDAY coupon code (10% off, expires today). If you find you need more RAM, an extra 2GB can be had for $55 or less; Lenovo will charge you $110 for pretty much the same thing installed by them.
Edit: with the money you save, you could bump some parts of the system that would be less convenient/cheap to upgrade yourself. A bigger hard drive, for example, or a 9-cell battery for longer battery life.
Video processing, as far as I know, does chew up a fair bit of RAM, so having extra is never bad. Whether to install it yourself kind of depends on how comfortable you are doing it. Certainly RAM can be purchased cheaper online from a site like Newegg, so it's kind of up to the buyer what they want to do.
Especially MPEG-2.
we also talk about other random shit and clown upon each other
You get a lot more bang for the buck, especially for pure processing power and higher-end applications (such as for video editing) in a desktop.
My partner has been a strictly laptop user for years and years, and is finally caving in to a desktop because she's sick of buying expensive machines that can't accomplish nearly as much as my three-year old, same price-range beast.
I'd also suggest a desktop due to the fact that a 1+TB hard drive is amazing, especially for people who have a lot of media.
you need a lot of ram, but more importantly a lot of spare hard drive space (preferable away from your main install drive, as continuous writing to a disk will burn out the motors), and more importantly, a minimum 7200rpm drive. most laptops use 5400rpm drives. proc speed and video cards will make using the editor faster, and speed up rendering, but not necessary for the raw amount of data being used.
you can get an idea of what you need from the adobe site:
http://www.adobe.com/products/premiere/systemreqs/
best bet is to find the site of whatever editor you plan on using and look up the min reqs.
Of course, if your wife wants a laptop, there is no much you can do, just make sure you get a dual core processor (or Quad), the bigger the hard disk the better.
In turns of speed, a decent NVidia graphic card will help a lot too by using the new technology called CUDA. The following applications are a must:
1. Mainconcept mpeg encoder (which can use both cores for faster transcoding)
2. TMPGEnc Xpress 4 ( CUDA enabled for noise reduction filter).
Laptops are more convenient.
But if it's a question of something being hundreds cheaper if it is a desktop, I'm very open to that.
edit: huh, yeah desktops sound a lot better for this.
Like I said she pretty much just wants to put together home movies and maybe ten minute cooking segments for her blog - she's not trying to make an independent film. Working backwards from the software package sounds like a good method.
Is the windows software any good or should I be looking at other software?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883147071
It's a recertified HP desktop. For $500 you're getting 8gb RAM, a 2.3ghz quad core CPU, a dedicated video card, 750gb hard drive, etc etc. It's already loads better than what you can get in a laptop for a comparable price and that was the result of a literally 30 second search.
Take a look around at desktops, you'll be surprised. I didn't bother looking at them before because you specified you wanted a laptop.
If you're willing to build the PC from components yourself, you can get an extremely good PC for under $1000.
This is not how it works. If your video editing software is written to make OpenGL calls to a discrete graphics chip, then yes, a discrete graphics chip will help you encode video faster. Premiere does this, which is why the system requirements flatline linked specify an "OpenGL 2.0 compatible graphics card". The vast majority of consumer-level editing software does not implement this feature, so a faster graphics card will have no impact when editing using those products. My bet is OP's wife doesn't edit in anything close to Premiere, and thus a dedicated graphics card would offer no net benefit for her.
Many graphics cards list "MPEG-2 acceleration" or similar on their spec sheet, but that's just decoding (i.e. playback) and wouldn't really come into play when editing and encoding video. Nvidia hardware lumps all these decoding acceleration features under the PureVideo brand name, but it's just hardware-accelerated decoding for common encoded formats (MPEG2, MPEG4, WMV, etc.) plus basic post-processing (deinterlacing, color correction, etc.), so it only affects playback.
OP wants to spend as little as $500 on the hardware, you think he's going to want to spend $100 just for encoding software?
Regardless of whether we're talking about desktop or laptop, the bottom line for me is that there's no point in OP spending $$ on a dedicated graphics card/chip unless the software his wife uses will actually take advantage of it.
So I should be looking for rebuilt desktops?
Any desktops, really. Browse around and get a good idea of what's out there.
It doesn't sound like you need a powerhouse, which makes things easier and cheaper.
windows movie maker (for $0), pinnacle ($50), premier elements($90) will probably run more than fine on the HP Nostregar linked. the WMM is free, so if its garbage, no loss. everything else out there will probably have a demo for download.
but still, a secondary hard drive for a scratch disc is a very very good idea no matter what.
still wouldn't recommend a laptop in the price ranges listed by the OP.
The advantage of building your own computer means you will not be getting generic parts, your PC won't be loaded with crappy software that will slow it down (I'm looking at you Dell, HP, etc.), and that you'll be able to get parts that are way better for cheaper. I built a very, VERY good PC for a solid $1,000 dollars and really splurged on the case, power supply, processor, and ram. I was a bit cheaper on my video card.
The only time pre-builts are worth it to me is if they come with a monitor/mouse/keyboard and all that jazz.