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Laptop for video editing

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Lions

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Interested in purchasing laptop for video editing. Just starting out shooting video. PC not Apple, 15 or 17 inch screen, Window 8+ or Windows 10, core i7, 16 Gig ram, 1 t-byte HD + 256 KB SSD, Nvidia 960M graphics card. Anything else and what are your recommendations. Thanks.


Ken
 
I regularly edit my 4K videos from GH4 and gopro 4 on a Lenovo yoga 2 pro - i7, 8 ram, intel integrated graphics 4400 - and it does just fine. the key for me was powerdirector 13 which has smart rendering - it is like 10 times as fast as adobe premiere. while a dedicated graphics card is helpful with intensive grading and very long video files (most of my work is under 10 minutes), it may not be essential for most video editing these days, as the newer integrated graphics are quite impressive.
 
Hey James, thanks for the info.
 
I use an ASUS 17" gaming laptop, Windows 8, i7, Nvidia graphics, 16 gig or ram and it has room for 2 hard drives. Premiere, Photoshop & After Effects run great on it.
 
dennis chapin said:
I use an ASUS 17" gaming laptop, Windows 8, i7, Nvidia graphics, 16 gig or ram and it has room for 2 hard drives. Premiere, Photoshop & After Effects run great on it.
Click to expand...
Thanks Dennis,

I just purchased the ASUS 17" gaming laptop, windows 8.1, Nvidia graphics (3 GB), 32 GB ram, 1 T drive and 1-256 GB SSD drive.

Ken
 
Depends on budget. You can have a laptop with hex core i7, discreet desktop GPUs, 128GB RAM, etc....

If you are serious, you need a desktop workstation or a monster laptop (custom built with desktop parts). If you are just hobby, even a Surface Pro (8GB) will suffice. I do not like nVidia Optimus with my limited experience. It does not switch to discreet graphics, so editing is a pain. I cannot even force it with the "run program with high performance GPU" option. I've learned to just use low res when editing. On Vegas for example, I use Preview auto or Preview Half and still get less than 24fps playback.
 
I think a desktop is easier to work off of and much much cheaper
 
martin makati said:
I think a desktop is easier to work off of and much much cheaper
Click to expand...
Martin,

Can you recommend a minimum desktop system to do 4K editing?

Thanks,

Dave
 
daveco2 said:
martin makati said:
I think a desktop is easier to work off of and much much cheaper
Click to expand...
Martin,

Can you recommend a minimum desktop system to do 4K editing?
Click to expand...
.

How much is your budget? If it can handle $999, this would be a decent system:

http://www.costco.com/.product.1002...vc=itempageVerticalRight|CategorySiloedViewCP

If that is too much money, this system is only $779:

http://www.costco.com/.product.1002...categorypageHorizontalTop|CategoryTopProducts

.
 
Last edited:
lancespring said:
daveco2 said:
martin makati said:
I think a desktop is easier to work off of and much much cheaper
Click to expand...
Martin,

Can you recommend a minimum desktop system to do 4K editing?
Click to expand...
.

How much is your budget? If it can handle $999, this would be a decent system:

http://www.costco.com/.product.1002...vc=itempageVerticalRight|CategorySiloedViewCP

If that is too much money, this system is only $779:

http://www.costco.com/.product.1002...categorypageHorizontalTop|CategoryTopProducts
Click to expand...
Now that would be very interesting. Would that get me comfortably into 4K? I was led to believe I needed to spend $3500 on a system:

i7 8 cores; 32 GB Ram; NVidia Quadro K2200 4GB; 1 TB SSD; 250 GB SSD
 
daveco2 said:
lancespring said:
How much is your budget? If it can handle $999, this would be a decent system:

http://www.costco.com/.product.1002...vc=itempageVerticalRight|CategorySiloedViewCP

If that is too much money, this system is only $779:

http://www.costco.com/.product.1002...categorypageHorizontalTop|CategoryTopProducts
Click to expand...
Now that would be very interesting. Would that get me comfortably into 4K? I was led to believe I needed to spend $3500 on a system:

i7 8 cores; 32 GB Ram; NVidia Quadro K2200 4GB; 1 TB SSD; 250 GB SSD
Click to expand...
Those two systems have extremely under powered GPUs!!!! I think the camera may matter, but the GH4 does not appear to stress my system...
  • i7 4930k
  • 32GB RAM
  • R9 280x
  • 840 pro SSD
I found that for many editing tasks, it performed equal to my other system:
  • FX 8320
  • 16GB RAM
  • GTX 580
  • 840 pro SSD
The second system should cost around $1000: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/M4dtGX

At the approx $1000 budget, intel can work, but you are getting lower end motherboard, PSU, GPU, etc... or a lower end CPU. It honestly makes little to no difference though. As I said, for me even the 4930K, which is hex core does not significantly outperform the AMD (it does in rendering, but that is overnight anyway, so it is moot).

The 4930k system cost me around $2200. At this point, you can probably get away with under $2k for a good 5820k build, which is also hex, but limited pipelines. This shouldn't affect you unless you are doing RAID cards or multiple GPUs...
 
DJohnny said:
Depends on budget. You can have a laptop with hex core i7, discreet desktop GPUs, 128GB RAM, etc....

If you are serious, you need a desktop workstation or a monster laptop (custom built with desktop parts). If you are just hobby, even a Surface Pro (8GB) will suffice. I do not like nVidia Optimus with my limited experience. It does not switch to discreet graphics, so editing is a pain. I cannot even force it with the "run program with high performance GPU" option. I've learned to just use low res when editing. On Vegas for example, I use Preview auto or Preview Half and still get less than 24fps playback.
Click to expand...
I've never seen a computer with 128GB of RAM, let alone a laptop. I think you meant 128GB solid state drive?
 
Lions said:
dennis chapin said:
I use an ASUS 17" gaming laptop, Windows 8, i7, Nvidia graphics, 16 gig or ram and it has room for 2 hard drives. Premiere, Photoshop & After Effects run great on it.
Click to expand...
Thanks Dennis,

I just purchased the ASUS 17" gaming laptop, windows 8.1, Nvidia graphics (3 GB), 32 GB ram, 1 T drive and 1-256 GB SSD drive.

Ken
Click to expand...
Sounds like a monster. I'm going to have to upgrade soon.
 
They can go much higher depending on the CPU/motherboard. Mine supports 64gb. Some support 128gb. Enterprise setups can support much more. Dual CPU can take for example 128gb per CPU. 8 CPU can do 1TB Ram!!
 
DJohnny said:
They can go much higher depending on the CPU/motherboard. Mine supports 64gb. Some support 128gb. Enterprise setups can support much more. Dual CPU can take for example 128gb per CPU. 8 CPU can do 1TB Ram!!
Click to expand...
Wow! I had no idea.
 
I use a 2014 iMac. I took a video editing class for final cut pro last year and our teacher told us that the mac book pro was still having trouble sometimes. I also did some light video editing on my sony i7. It worked as long as you don't have too much rendering. Sorry I am not the best to recommend. My sony is a 2012 model. It didn't handle colour grading very well. If you aren't doing anything too hard it can work.
 
PVCdroid said:
Lions said:
dennis chapin said:
I use an ASUS 17" gaming laptop, Windows 8, i7, Nvidia graphics, 16 gig or ram and it has room for 2 hard drives. Premiere, Photoshop & After Effects run great on it.
Click to expand...
Thanks Dennis,

I just purchased the ASUS 17" gaming laptop, windows 8.1, Nvidia graphics (3 GB), 32 GB ram, 1 T drive and 1-256 GB SSD drive.

Ken
Click to expand...
Sounds like a monster. I'm going to have to upgrade soon.
Click to expand...
Yes, weighs 10lbs but lighter and more portable than my desktop!!
 
daveco2 said:
lancespring said:
daveco2 said:
martin makati said:
I think a desktop is easier to work off of and much much cheaper
Click to expand...
Martin,

Can you recommend a minimum desktop system to do 4K editing?
Click to expand...
.

How much is your budget? If it can handle $999, this would be a decent system:

http://www.costco.com/.product.1002...vc=itempageVerticalRight|CategorySiloedViewCP

If that is too much money, this system is only $779:

http://www.costco.com/.product.1002...categorypageHorizontalTop|CategoryTopProducts
Click to expand...
Now that would be very interesting. Would that get me comfortably into 4K? I was led to believe I needed to spend $3500 on a system:

i7 8 cores; 32 GB Ram; NVidia Quadro K2200 4GB; 1 TB SSD; 250 GB SSD
Click to expand...
.

Hard to give you further advice, without better understanding your needs. Will this be used in a business, and doing video production on a daily basis? If so, then investing in a 6 or 8 core CPU could make sense, as well as spending the big dollars for a Quadro card.

Otherwise, if you are simply a video enthusiast, like most of us here are, and the computer will not be generating revenue, you can get by with a lot less. I've yet to see my Windows Resource Monitor tell me that is is using more than 16 GB of RAM when rendering 4k. Going to 32 GB of RAM might make sense, but I honestly cannot see any need for more than that.


DJohnny was correct that those packaged computers did have weak graphics cards. But it would be easy to upgrade them. Just pop in a more powerful power supply, along with a top notch graphics card.

Or better yet, you could simply build a system from scratch to your exact specs, on the CyberPower website.

Using their website:


http://www.cyberpowerpc.com/system/CyberPower_X99_Configurator

I was able to build a system with a 6 core Intel i7 CPU, 16 GB RAM, Nvidia GTX 960 4 GB graphics, with a 256 GB SSD and a 3 TB hard drive for $1,300 That would be a very capable system.

.
 
Last edited:
Thanks lancespring,

Can you give me an idea of how long it would take to render a 1 hr, 4K video (minimal transitions and effects) to a bluray disk?

I'm a video hobbyist, but my main money making use is CAD modeling in SolidWorks plus the usual MS Office apps.

Dave

lancespring said:
daveco2 said:
lancespring said:
daveco2 said:
martin makati said:
I think a desktop is easier to work off of and much much cheaper
Click to expand...
Martin,

Can you recommend a minimum desktop system to do 4K editing?
Click to expand...
.

How much is your budget? If it can handle $999, this would be a decent system:

http://www.costco.com/.product.1002...vc=itempageVerticalRight|CategorySiloedViewCP

If that is too much money, this system is only $779:

http://www.costco.com/.product.1002...categorypageHorizontalTop|CategoryTopProducts
Click to expand...
Now that would be very interesting. Would that get me comfortably into 4K? I was led to believe I needed to spend $3500 on a system:

i7 8 cores; 32 GB Ram; NVidia Quadro K2200 4GB; 1 TB SSD; 250 GB SSD
Click to expand...
.

Hard to give you further advice, without better understanding your needs. Will this be used in a business, and doing video production on a daily basis? If so, then investing in a 6 or 8 core CPU could make sense, as well as spending the big dollars for a Quadro card.

Otherwise, if you are simply a video enthusiast, like most of us here are, and the computer will not be generating revenue, you can get by with a lot less. I've yet to see my Windows Resource Monitor tell me that is is using more than 16 GB of RAM when rendering 4k. Going to 32 GB of RAM might make sense, but I honestly cannot see any need for more than that.

DJohnny was correct that those packaged computers did have weak graphics cards. But it would be easy to upgrade them. Just pop in a more powerful power supply, along with a top notch graphics card.

Or better yet, you could simply build a system from scratch to your exact specs, on the CyberPower website.

Using their website:

http://www.cyberpowerpc.com/system/CyberPower_X99_Configurator

I was able to build a system with a 6 core Intel i7 CPU, 16 GB RAM, Nvidia GTX 960 4 GB graphics, with a 256 GB SSD and a 3 TB hard drive for $1,300 That would be a very capable system.

.
Click to expand...
 
Lions said:
dennis chapin said:
I use an ASUS 17" gaming laptop, Windows 8, i7, Nvidia graphics, 16 gig or ram and it has room for 2 hard drives. Premiere, Photoshop & After Effects run great on it.
Click to expand...
Thanks Dennis,

I just purchased the ASUS 17" gaming laptop, windows 8.1, Nvidia graphics (3 GB), 32 GB ram, 1 T drive and 1-256 GB SSD drive.

Ken
Click to expand...
Me too. Mine is about 3+ years old. And, I use Premier Elements 13 to edit 4K from a Panasonic LX100. It works fine.

I bought the ASUS as a lower cost substitute for a laptop considered to be a "workstation".

Output rendering takes about 2 to 3 times the length of the project. AVCHD rendering can be about 1.5 times the length of the project. Quick videos with no adjustments or effects render faster than those with more.

Prior to SSDs, a common approach to speed was to incorporate multiple drives for software, source and output. I have my software on the SSD and reserve a work space folder for my current project. When complete, the entire folder gets moved to a storage drive to make room for the next project.
 
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