Laptop for editing

[Tom O'Farrell]

I need to get a new laptop for traveling-intend to buy X5 for this new laptop. Does anybody here have any experience using Corel on a laptop? What the system requirements are for successful use of X5.

[teknisyan]

I'm using Sony Vaio E series and have VS X3 to X5 installed and have not encounter any issue.. Another thing that you need to remember that the type of notebook that you will buy will depend on the type of video (HD or SD) that you will be working on. If you're working on HD or AVCHD then you may need a more powerful notebook.

As for the sys req or specs of my notebook, just check the specs under my user name on the left hand side.

[erdna]

I always wonder why people advise to buy a more powerfull PC when using HD/AVCHD, especially when using VideoStudio. The program allows since quite some years to work in Proxy mode (only about a year ago Edius was proud to announce the Proxy workflow from version 6.0 on...) I am not convinced that you need a more powerful PC with the Proxy workflow in HD than what you need for SD. In addition I always use smart render, and it is my experience that creating a DVD file from DV.avi takes alot more time than creating an AVCHD disc or file from a fullhd video on the same PC.

[Ken Berry]

Tom -- take a look at my Profile under my avatar. You will see I am now using a HP laptop i7 and it works a treat! My only niggling complaint about it is its screen (15.6") which makes the VS preview screen very small, even if you make it a bit larger internally. But as you will see, I have it connected at home to a 24" monitor which is full HD 1920 x 1080 in resolution, so all is fine...

erdna -- while I agree about SmartProxy, you still need something better than a P4 to be able to play AVCHD smoothly once it has been edited.

[Tom O'Farrell]

Thanx for replies. The issue of the screen size concerns me. The 17" laptops get pricey.
I am traveling Canada, western U.S. and parts of Mexico in my smaller truck camper. This is why I need a new laptop. No room for a desktop.
Maybe I should fit a HD capable monitor (say) 22" or 24" into the camper and use a smaller laptop hooked to it with HDMI.
Same as I presume Ken has.
Food for thought.

[Ken Berry]

Don't get me wrong: the 15.6" screen still gives adequate previews. But I guess it really depends on a number of factors: how long will you be travelling for? How much editing will you be doing along the way? And how patient are you?

I personally wouldn't be doing much editing during a relatively short trip away, and would find the in-built screen perfectly adequate for that. But when I am home -- which is when I do most of my editing -- I very much prefer a bigger screen, and that is easy enough to manage too.

[ianwoody123]

I now have a Novatech i7 laptop with 16gb ram and 500gb hard drive with an hd screen. I run two external hard drives off it and use ProX4 for dealing with AVCHD footage from my Panasonic TM 700. It copes with everything easily and previews the finished footage really well.

[39_Steps]

All 17 inch laptops are not created equal. I gave up on buying a powerful one at a price I was willing to pay late last year and settled on an intel core i3 equipped model that does not support 1080 resolution, even out of the HDMI port. Do your homework. Ivy Bridge processors may make for higher resulution output in lower priced laptops without discrete graphics cards eventually, but to date I have read no reports corroborating this PR pipedream.