Laptop set up for PD - suggestions?

SANDEEP100

Newbie Joined: Apr 16, 2011 23:37 Messages: 10 Offline

Solved by

Sep 12, 2011 21:50

Hello all. I would appreciate input from cyberlink powerDirector veterans about the usability and efficiency of a laptop I'm about to purchase. I will be using adobe from time to time as well but do a lot of work with PD9 ultra 64. I do HD editing from my HD camcorder (and soon from an FX dSLR). I would also want to do 3D video editing in the future when there is more software support for it. I have a few options for my config which I'll list below. I was going to purchase this with 2 SSDs but I had read SSDs aren't really a good option with video editing given the heavy read/write cycles so I've managed to pull off a raid 0 array and stick with one SSD as the OS drive.

Here it is:

Clevo P170HM3DE
Mobile Display 17.3" Full HD (1920x1080) 120Hz Matte LED Backlit LCD, and NVIDIA 3D Vision Glasses Kit Bundle
CPU Intel Core i7-2720QM 2.20GHz, 1600MHz DDR3, 6MB Cache, Socket G1 Mobile Processor
System Memory 16GB (4 x 4GB) , PC3-12800, 1600MHz SODIMM (Patriot) Quad-core processors ONLY!
Video Adapter NVIDIA GTX 580M 2048MB GDDR5 DX11 Compliant Video Card
Optical Swap Out Optical drive for additional Hard Drive
Hard Drive 1 Crucial 128GB M4 Series SATA III 6.0GB/sec Solid State Drive
Hard Drive 2 500GB 7200 16MB Cache SATA Notebook Hard Drive
Hard Drive 3 500GB 7200 16MB Cache SATA Notebook Hard Drive
Network Card Onboard Gigabit (10/100/1000 Mbits/sec) LAN subsystem
Wireless Card KILLER WirelessN 1102 the best wireless gaming and HD video experience Back to School FREEBIE
Operating System Windows 7 Professional

Questions:
1. Is the NVIDIA GTX 580M overkill? Can I get away with 560M? Or how about ATI Radeon 6970 or 6990? I want to take advantage of GPU optimization.

2. HD set up - is this recommended or something else recommended? I'd use the RAID for everything including shadow edit files.

BarryTheCrab

Senior Contributor Location: USA Joined: Nov 06, 2008 22:18 Messages: 6240 Offline

Sep 12, 2011 22:14

That laptop is insufficient for HD editing, you should pack it up and send it to me...

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RobertJ/OZ

Senior Contributor Location: Melbourne Australia Joined: Aug 14, 2006 02:26 Messages: 1209 Offline

Sep 13, 2011 02:24

Your hard drive 1 which is assumed will be your C: drive does not have sufficient capacity for HD editing and SS drives appear to create issues for some editors.
For HD you require a min. of 100GB of FREE space, so you should consider increasing the capacity of the SS drive.
Other than that, you will have some real grunt available

Robert Intel i7 930, 16GB ram, Radeon HD 5770 1Gb,Ver. 14.12 Win7 64 bit
Intel i7 7700 HQ, 16 GB ram Nvidia GTX 1050Ti 4GB dual drives 1 TB SSD + 1 TB HDD Win 10

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CubbyHouseFilms

Senior Contributor Location: Melbourne, Australia Joined: Jul 14, 2009 04:23 Messages: 2208 Offline

Sep 13, 2011 03:34

Hi

You have more 'grunt' than my laptops - my specs are near my sign off and I have had very little problems with PD.

I agree with Robert your SS may need tweaking.

Happy editing

Happing editing

Best Regards

Neil
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SANDEEP100

Newbie Joined: Apr 16, 2011 23:37 Messages: 10 Offline

Sep 13, 2011 22:47

Thanks for the feedback everyone. My original plan was actually NOT to use the SSD for editing and keep the shadow editing files on the other HDs.

Anyone have suggestions about how much better (?minimal, moderate, a ton) each of the set ups below would be compared to my default set up?

DEFAULT SET UP
C: SSD as OS/program files (NO media work)
D: with RAID 0 with two 7200rpm HDs with ALL of media work

SET UP # 1
C: SSD as OS/program files (NO media work)
D: with single 7200rpm HD for SOME media work
E: with single 7200rpm HD for SOME media work
(Trying to split media b/t D & E)

SET UP # 2
C: SSD as OS/program files and SOME media work (shadow edit files) - in this case I would opt for a larger SSD.
D: with RAID 0 with two 7200rpm HDs for rest of media work

SET UP # 3
C: SSD as as/program files (NO media work)
D: with a single 7200rpm HD for some media work
E: with esata with RAID 0 with two 7200 HDs for some media work
(Trying to split media b/t D & E)

Also any suggestions on how much better I'll be using GTX 580m over GTX 560m or if I should go for Radeon 6990 or 6970 instead?

Thanks!

pjc3

Senior Member Location: Australia Joined: May 29, 2010 19:33 Messages: 247 Offline

Sep 14, 2011 22:43

I don't think you will need to utilise shadow files unless you are really using multiple, multiple tracks. Panasonic SD9, Panasonic TM700, Panasonic SD600, GoPro HD Hero.

James1

Senior Contributor Location: Surrey, B.C., Canada Joined: Jun 10, 2010 16:20 Messages: 1783 Offline

Sep 14, 2011 23:02

Hi,
Not familiar with laptops or SSd drives, but from what I have read on the forum here unless your SSD drive is LARGE you will have trouble! It doesn't matter how you set your drives up PD still use c:\ drive for background rendering....so it may still give problems

Jim
p.s this is based on the feed back from experienced members here on the forum...
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SANDEEP100

Newbie Joined: Apr 16, 2011 23:37 Messages: 10 Offline

Sep 15, 2011 17:56

Jim,

Wow. Thanks for that info - I had no idea that you couldn't change C drive for rendering. I would've been pretty unhappy if I had been stuck with a crippled SSD. Can anyone else chime in who knows about this? I'd like to get some more feedback before making a final decision on am SSD.

Charles

HalCon

Senior Contributor Location: Charlottetown, PEI Joined: Mar 01, 2008 10:36 Messages: 719 Offline

Sep 15, 2011 18:08

Charles,

Click on search at the top(left), search the PD9 forum for "SSD Drive", you will get lots of topics relating to the use of these drives for video editing.

There are many cons and very few pros relating the use of SSD drives for editing. Those who swapped out the SSD for a standard drive either eliminated their problems or reduced them considerably.

I, myself, am very old school. I would not purchase a laptop with the intention of doing any heavy video editing. Nor would I consider any drive less that 300g for a system drive.

Just my humble opinion, of course.

Hal

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