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I'm looking for a machine (has to be a laptop) reasonably fast enough to handle editing/transcoding/rendering to Blu-ray disc of full true HD 1080p (1920x1080) video from a Samsung R10 camcorder - MPEG4 25fps (not the Sony-Panasonic AVCHD format):

  • To be able to browse through the footage (say, quarter screen is fine for monitoring) and do simple edits - cut out bad bits, add titles, fades, nothing too fancy
  • To be able to burn the footage in 1920x1080p 24p (twenty-four) fps to blu-ray, probably don't mind if I have to leave it for a few hours, or even overnight, as long as its not still running in the morning or takes days. I ALREADY have an external USB 2.0 LG BE06LU10 blu-ray burner.

Does quad core make much difference? Or would Dual-core suffice for the above?

NVidia because of CUDA for increased speed. What software today can take advantage of this? Which graphics card do I need?

So far I've found Dell/Alienware to be well-specified, having a 5yr old Dell laptop that still runs well, albeit slow by today's standards, gives me a good impression.

My concerns are too much fan-noise and budget and some Dell Precision Laptops exceed 1500 pounds.

Thoughts?

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My general concern with hardware rec's is that you have to be able to use the hardware you buy. Yes quad-cores and cuda can speed things up, but only with the appropiate software. I would recommend asking what software would be best suited for your goal, instead of targetting a hardware advice. – Ivo Flipse♦ Feb 15 '10 at 20:14
@Ivo - very good point - Final Cut Pro seems to be the software package of choice for HD video work. Many successful low budget movies and documentaries are produced with just a semi-pro HD camcorder, a Mac and Final Cut Pro these days. – Paul R Feb 16 '10 at 9:23

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2 Answers

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You can get a decent MacBook or MacBook Pro for under £1000, and it would seem to do all you need. Everything I've read seems to suggest that Mac OS X is the platform of choice for video editing etc. Check out the Apple Refurb Store for some bargains.

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Have you tried your suggestion yourself? With 1080p video? How well does it work for you? Tell me about your general experiences with video editing? From your profile it would seem that you might know a lot about this area ("Optimisation, SIMD, AltiVec, SSE, Cell, GPGPU, CUDA, DSP, image processing"). – therobyouknow Feb 15 '10 at 14:07
I would add that I find the Mac's more restrictive in configuration options, for example: 5400rpm hard disc instead of 7200rpm except for 17", no ExpressCard interface to attach high-speed eSATA 10K rpm drives (except for 17"). 17" is way over my budget. Also, still no quad-cores on Macs, but they do use nVidia which is a plus. But again, your real-life experiences would be helpful. – therobyouknow Feb 15 '10 at 14:09
The rumour mill seems to suggest that Nehalem MacBooks are imminent - I guess these will be quad core but will most likely be more expensive than your £1000 budget. – Paul R Feb 15 '10 at 17:30
I'm not really involved in consumer video editing/processing so I can't give any first-hand feedback. I am involved in performance though and I doubt that there is much difference in performance between a similarly specced Dell or Apple Intel/nVidia laptop at the hardware level. The main difference is OS and application software. FWIW there was a head-to-head on this exact issue on The Gadget Show on Channel 5 last year and the MacBook beat a Sony laptop hands down on capturing/editing 1080p HD video. – Paul R Feb 15 '10 at 17:36
Rob, if you have any secondary requirements please add them to your question ;-) – Ivo Flipse♦ Feb 15 '10 at 20:08
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The answer so far would be Alienware from Dell or HP, as these have: - Intel Quad core chips - useful for multi-threaded video transcoding, demanding apps - nVidia graphics - CUDA therefore available to help with the transcoding - 7200rpm fast hard drive

Alienware already mentioned and also reckon this HP comes pretty close to what I'm looking for, at a good price:

http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/uk/en/ho/WF06b/321957-321957-3329744-64354-64354-4041735-4105238.html

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