Laptops for video editing recommendations

[Pumaedition]

Our media studies teacher wants to purchase some laptops (she wants macs, but i dont!!), and so I am after some recommendations from you guys as to what to get.

Obviously, they will have to be fairly powerful machines to edit with ease. Budget is around £700 per laptop really....if less, then great! We will be using Serif MoviePlus to do the video editing as well.

Fairly vague description, but what have you got?!

[laserblazer]

The problem I've found with laptops is getting sufficient disk space and drives that spin fast enough. That may have changed now with SATA drives, been a while since I checked. If you are going the laptop route, then I'd say teacher is right for once. Macs are the way to go.

[Pumaedition]

The only problem we would have with macs, is the fact there is no-one on site that is familiar with using them. I have had no training/prior experience with Apple machines, and as such, I have concerns about compatability with our network etc

[dhicks]

I am after some recommendations from you guys as to what to get.

Might be worth thinking about what cables and cards you want to be able to plug in to the laptops. A few years ago lots of laptops came with mini firewire ports, which made them great for doing editing with older DV video cameras. I don't know if many new laptops still have firewire ports, though. Most laptops these days will have a memory card reader, though - generally SD, so check what your cameras use. I've seen some laptops with eSATA ports, which would allow you to attach a proper, fast harddrive for storing and editing larger video projects.

--
David Hicks

[Brpilot99]

Decent amount of RAM and a dedicated graphics board (not the shared memory type !!) You can use a USB 2.00 external drive for storage ..... I use Movieplus 4 on an oldish PC with a decent graphics board and it runs fine .....

[FN-GM]

Whats wrong with Macs?

[mac_shinobi]

Whats wrong with Macs?

have to agree - whats wrong with them ?

[eean]

Sorry, I hate macs and really don't know what all the fuss is about BUT
Their iMovie 09 is a great movie editing pacakage. And a site licence for iLife is something stuipid - like 300 quid. Are you going to fix up those PCs with Adobe Premier?

[mac_shinobi]

Sorry, I hate macs and really don't know what all the fuss is about BUT
Their iMovie 09 is a great movie editing pacakage. And a site licence for iLife is something stuipid - like 300 quid. Are you going to fix up those PCs with Adobe Premier?

ok so how much is the site license for adobes premier ?

£300 for iLife versus video editing software on pc's unless your using movie maker which isn't that great is not that expensive - when you say site license am guessing for the macs that means that if you get 20 to start with and ok £300 is a bit much but am guessing if you got more macs you could always install iLife onto them without any issues ?

[Pumaedition]

We will be using Serif MoviePlus for video-editing, on the PCs. so large amounts of memory and dedicated graphics card.

How about this from Novatech?

Computer Supplies and PC Components from Novatech

OR

http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/e...&s=NNB-736&v=1

[FN-GM]

iLife comes free with the OS.

Im not being funny or anything here so dont take offence.... But why stop them using them if you simply dont like them. Maybe the teacher has good reason and wants to use mac because its btter for the students to use. At the end of the day this is there education.

Note: this is not a dig at windows or the creator of this post

[JJonas]

Why laptops?

You will probably be able to buy a better desktop for the same money, and in my experience laptops in schools don't work, keys get pulled off, laptop gets dropped, picked up by screen and screen broken and so on. If you need portability maybe you might be off just buying two laptops and putting the rest of the money into better desktops.

[mac_shinobi]

iLife comes free with the OS.

Im not being funny or anything here so dont take offence.... But why stop them using them if you simply dont like them. Maybe the teacher has good reason and wants to use mac because its btter for the students to use. At the end of the day this is there education.

Note: this is not a dig at windows or the creator of this post

I agree with that - had apple imacs and pc desktops when working at the kingswood school and the students never damaged the macs yet they did the pc desktops. The only thing with the apple macs is you have to keep them under lock and key so students dont steal them same with any other IT equipment.

Kingswood on here would be a good person to ask as they have apple macs at the kingswood school so am sure he will be able to help a lot on this topic.

IMO PC's just are not as good as macs when it comes to video editing - thats what macs are used for, video, audio etc.

[eean]

Oh yes you're right. iLife comes with the OS. The upgrade for the site licence is what's about 300 - which I think is perfectly reasonable for even 10+ machines.

[mossj]

Im not being funny or anything here so dont take offence.... But why stop them using them if you simply dont like them. Maybe the teacher has good reason and wants to use mac because its btter for the students to use. At the end of the day this is there education.

Note: this is not a dig at windows or the creator of this post

He said hes not sure about how to use them properly with the network/domain (which is fine), but why not learn? Alternativly just install xp onto them but its a huge waste....

P.S

The only problem we would have with macs, is the fact there is no-one on site that is familiar with using them. I have had no training/prior experience with Apple machines, and as such, I have concerns about compatability with our network etc