Editing computer

[lkptrex]

Hello Gents,

I have a little bit of an issue. I have had my Phantom for a month or so and have shot many GoPro vids.

Major problem is editing: I have a 6 year old sony Vaio laptop which meets the requirement for GoPro Studio but at the minimal side of the scale. Unfortunately for me leads to my PC crashing every time I try to convert my raw footage. I have installed other editing programs with no luck.

Now the question:

Since I am in the market for a new lap top will all of the higher end machines be able to edit this footage?

Thank you in advance for any info you can provide.

 

[rilot]

Plenty of RAM is the key. Ideally you want an i7 CPU for the extra cache to help video rendering but i5 is great too.

 

[Shrimpfarmer]

This subject can quickly descend into an argument but in the hope that it does not I would plump for a Mac every time. I have had many PC editing rigs over the years but none of them came close to my Macs for ease of use and reliability. They are expensive to buy but not when you compare them to a high end PC. Also with the new Thunderbolt drives I can now edit HD footage even on my Macbook Air.

 

[rilot]

Aye, I have a MacBook Pro (2013 model) and it's great for video editing. I also have a grunty desktop with 32GB RAM in it which is also great for video editing. Horses for courses really. Both are great.

 

[marcus_canada]

RAM, 8gb minimum and an SSD are wonderful bed mates for video rendering.

A multicore CPU such as a quad i5 or i7 is great but many editing programs can utilize specific video cards. I like Nvidia cards with lots of cuda cores, these will do the rendering work instead of the CPU.
My editing machine has an i7 cpu in it which runs like a freight train, however, my AMD 6950 card will render a movie in a similar time in tests. I use Power director 11 for simple editing and in that you can literally choose whether you want to the CPU or the GPU to do the work.

The good things about having the video card do the work are;

a) you can still use the PC at the same time as the CPU is largely unaffected by the rendering and
b) a good video card is often a far cheaper way of updating instead of forking over large amount of dough for a Mobo/CPU/Memory

 

[Shrimpfarmer]

The Mac comes with iMovie which is more than good enough for simple editing. In my view it all depends on how much editing you think your going to do. Anyone who edits for a living needs real horsepower as they often work to deadlines. A casual user can afford to edit and leave a lesser machine to render overnight if needed. Its not as convenient to do so but its a lot lot cheaper

 

[Driffill]

Hello Gents,

I have a little bit of an issue. I have had my Phantom for a month or so and have shot many GoPro vids.

Major problem is editing: I have a 6 year old sony Vaio laptop which meets the requirement for GoPro Studio but at the minimal side of the scale. Unfortunately for me leads to my PC crashing every time I try to convert my raw footage. I have installed other editing programs with no luck.

Now the question:

Since I am in the market for a new lap top will all of the higher end machines be able to edit this footage?

Thank you in advance for any info you can provide.

Good timing! I literally made payment on my new computer system today! It's kind of a Christmas birthday gift to myself lmao . . .

Intel I7 4770k, 32Gb RAM, Intel Z87 motherboard, 3Tb HDD, 240Gb SSD, Nvidia GTX650Ti 2gb graphics, packed in a coolmaster RC942 HAF-X case w/850w PSU and a bunch of little extras like USB3.0 internal sd-card reader, Aerocool strike x fan controller, Blu ray burner etc.

Now, as for your question, for a simple system good for processing gopro videos, I'd be looking at no less than an i7 (3770 or higher), from what I've read they were specifically design for hd video, if that's for playback or rendering I don't know? As mentioned already, the more ram the better, if you looking specifically at laptops then 16gb is probably the most you will find without going into higher end laptops. SSDs are still fairly expensive, but well worth it when you have a computer capable of high speed processing, however I'd avoid using an SSD as the primary HDD as the OS will rob you of expensive ($) space.

As for software, I'm a total noob! I've only used GoPro Cineform studio and racerender2 so I'm after suggestions on what software I should look into for editing my videos given i have NO experience. so I'd need something I can learn on, not something packed full of more features than I'd ever use lmao

 

[lkptrex]

Well this is what I am leaning towards.

Do I really need the i7 or will the new i5 be able to handle my basic editing

Both have the same intel Iris graphics pro


13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display
Item Price: $1,699.00
Quantity (13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display)

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Hardware
•2.8GHz Dual-core Intel Core i7, Turbo Boost up to 3.3GHz
•8GB 1600MHz DDR3L SDRAM
•128GB PCIe-based Flash Storage

Software
•iPhoto, iMovie, GarageBand
•Pages, Numbers, Keynote
•OS X
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or

Hardware
•2.6GHz Dual-core Intel Core i5, Turbo Boost up to 3.1GHz
•8GB 1600MHz DDR3L SDRAM
•256GB PCIe-based Flash Storage
•Backlit Keyboard (English) & User's Guide
•Accessory Kit



Software
•iPhoto, iMovie, GarageBand
•Pages, Numbers, Keynote
•OS X




















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