Cheap, Lightweight, Portable, Laptop for Video Editing?

MovedGoalPosts · 27-03-2011, 13:02

I'm looking for some recommendations.

Firstly I have no money available so cost is a big issue. I've just spent far more than I wanted on the camera setup. Weight is also an issue for travelling.

I hope to be taking lots of underwater HD video. I'd then be bouncing around on a large boat with a lot of time to look at it and do some editing into a more finished article. OK so I have the main PC at home so I can always redo stuff later in a more professional manner, but I'd like to be able to do a first run whilst I am away.

I'll need a reasonable sized Hard Drive to store the original and then have a copy for the editing. I'd think 250GB would be a minimum? Over the course of a week I might do something like 20 dives each of which could create say 4GB of footage recorded onto SD cards.

Screen size can be quite small, after all portability and weight are more critical. Similarly battery life isn't a biggie as I can always plug in to something. Indeed, if editing I'd expect I'd be chewing through the battery reserves.

I accept that the laptop, due to price, would be underpowered for the editing, but provided it will actually edit then OK. I suspect that this rules out a netbook, but would it?

chrisjones · 29-03-2011, 23:30

Sorry but it's not going to happen for much under Â£600. The way HD camcorders compress the footage to SD cards makes it a total pain go edit on lower end machines, I dare say nearly impossible, trust me, I've tried it. You need a decent CPU to decoded and re-encode the files from your SD Card (or wherever you copy to), play back on anything less than i3 (or equivalent) will be choppy at best. I spent a good Â£700 to get something like a decent laptop for editing 1080i files via Vegas Pro 9, even then it can have a hiccup at times as really laptops aren't designed to be spending hours encoding clips

MovedGoalPosts · 30-03-2011, 10:14

Hmm, I can see this is going to get expensive then

I'd suspected I might be needing something dual cored but that rarely comes in smaller truly lightweight machines. I might have to rethink this.

DocDutch · 30-03-2011, 10:30

what about this okay its 2nd hand and running vista but that bit is easily changed

also okay 160gb hd again easily changed to http://www.ebuyer.com/product/153103 additional ram perhaps upgrade from 3 to 4...

---------- Post added at 10:30 ---------- Previous post was at 10:23 ----------

also what do you class as lightweight MGP??? Dilli at a lan with a beer in his hand and being drunk or lifting up Sirius?

MovedGoalPosts · 30-03-2011, 10:56

Given that one only gets 5KG of hand luggage allowance the laptop needs to be within that limit, along with quite a few other valuable items that wouldn't go in the hold, such as the camera kit itself. 2Kg would be quite heavy I suspect.

DocDutch · 30-03-2011, 11:01

ermmm this is 2.9kg.....

Hom3r · 30-03-2011, 11:03

Some of the new netbooks have duo core and are quite powerful.

DocDutch · 30-03-2011, 11:39

this Rob?? http://www.ebuyer.com/product/252324 bit lighter and better graphics you could even play a game of BFBC2 on it