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General discussion

laptop for video editing

Jul 5, 2009 7:38AM PDT

i need a loptop in the 400-600 range for internet use and video editing the programs i might use is the magix plus 15 or mabey adobe after effects what is a good laptop for my use

Discussion is locked

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What are the system requirements ...
Jul 5, 2009 8:04AM PDT

(minimum and recommended) for these two programs? Concentrate on RAM (when using Vista) and video.

Kees

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Video Editing CPU
Jul 6, 2009 2:00AM PDT

Sam,
My suggestion is a notebook with a Core 2 Duo (Notebook will either have Core 2 Duo or Centrino badge). You should be able to get one at the upper end of your price range. In the $400 range you will see more Pentium parts, which is great for general computing and the Internet but you'll find the Core 2 Duo is much better for video editing.

Happy editing

TimWoodChip
#Ignite

Disclosure:
TimWoodChip is an Intel employee and aspirational Sponsor of Tomorrow

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That depends on the program.
Jul 6, 2009 4:07AM PDT

I used the open source program Virtual Dub to to some basic edits, and it only used one core. Might be, of course, that some other uses 2. Do you know any that uses 4? Or don't "ordinary" like you and me need 4 cores?

Kees

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That depends seems iffy
Jul 6, 2009 4:10AM PDT

I ran Virtual Dub on my dual core and both were quite busy. I was 'transcoding' so maybe the cores get busy when input coding changes from output coding?

A simple snip without full re-encode seems to go single core which makes sense to me.
Bob

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I see.
Jul 6, 2009 4:18AM PDT

Tools>Preferences>Threading:
Zero disables video compressor multithreading; '1' causes the compressor to run in a separate thread for better performance on dual-core and SMP systems. Values greater than 1 are not yet supported.

Mine was set to 0 (by default, probably).

Thanks for pointing out!

Kees

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threads
Jul 6, 2009 4:18AM PDT

Core 2 Duo will run single threaded applications faster than Pentium too. Many applications (several from Adobe) are coded to scale with the number of cores a CPU has. However, you are not going to find a mobile quad-core at $600 any time soon. Best Buy is now assorting an HP mobile quad-core (Core 2 Quad Q9000) on shelf but the price point is north of $1000.

TimWoodChip
#ignite

Disclosure:
TimWoodChip is an Intel employee and aspirational sponsor of tomorrow