Specs for notebook used for DV editing

That system works fine. I've been using Centrino 1.3 GHz with 512 MB Ram and ATI Mobility Radeon 9000 for 8 months and there have been few issues: only some quality issues with dual monitor use and headphone output. For serious use, you need a secondary monitor (e.g. for color correction) and lots of disk space. I'd advice to look for a notebook with a good graphics card: dual monitor support, color correction, some 1400x1050 resolution, and 64-128 MB memory. I have 450 GB in external hard drives (firewire/firewire 800/USB 2.0), which is enough for three long projects. DV editing really takes up space. Also make sure that your laptop has premium speakers.

Edit: For reference, my laptop is Acer Travelmate 800. It has some quality issues, but overall it provided most bang for the buck 8 months back.

Cheers,

Tommi

Yes, many external hard drive enclosures offer firewire passthrough so you can daisy-chain firewire devices.

Guru have you checked out the Sagers? Video editing can be a whole lot more fun at twice+ the speed.

I use my Sager 8890 with 1GB RAM, 60GB 7200rpm HD, and P4 3.2GHz. It's a great for editing. I have two 160GB 7200rpm external drives connected through firewire. One is a Seagate with both firewire and usb2.0, I can't recommend it enough. The other is a Maxtor, it's ok. I run Sony Vegas 4.0 and Sound Forge 7.0. I can't complain. I just need to find a better audio solution. Either a Audigy NX 2 or perhaps a BitHead amp. All I can say is this machine is blazing fast when editing video.

1 firewire port is no problem. All firewire devices have in-built hubs, so that you can queue up to 63 firewire devices with just 1 firewire port on your computer. For example, my Acer has only 1 firewire port, but I have attached 3 firewire devices to it (1 external hdd, an external DVD burner, and a video camera).

Firewire 800 (IEEE 1394b) is compatible with the normal Firewire. You just need cables with appropriate connectors. Firewire can have 4 and 6 pin connectors (mini-Firewire and Firewire) and Firewire 800 has 9 pin connectors.

Cheers,

Tommi

GuruX

If battery life is it, than I can't say Sager 8890. Portability. Yes it is heavy. For the photo and video editing I do it was a good solution for me with the big screen and raw power. Most of the time I'm where I can plug in. Yes I'd like more than two hours battery life, but power comes at a price. Overall I'm very happy with my machine.

Good luck finding the machine to fit your needs.

This is off the subject of the notebook specs, but I'm thinking of getting a sager 4080 for DV editing also and I was just curious what NLE software people were using for editing and any other accessories you have for editing (hardware acceleraters, breakout boxes, etc.)

I'm thinking of Premiere Pro with after effect 6. But some others look pretty good too (pinnacle edition, Avid Xpress DV 4) That's if I can afford any of them.

Any suggestions from other notebook DV editors?

I'm using Avid Xpress Pro on my laptop, so I can integrate more easily with other editing stations (short answer). But unless you're in a similar pro environment situation, I'd reccommend Premiere Pro. It's cheaper, has some features you won't find in Xpress DV/Pro, and integration with AE is exceptional (it even uses AE technology in it's compositing and keyframe controls).

Pinnacle Edition may or may not be great software; I wouldn't consider it simply becasue it's not really a player. Avid, Premiere, and Final Cut are the three big boys, in use by the production facilities, and aren't going anywhere.

Inkling-
Doesn't 1beyond charge a huge premium over the cost of the same model from Sager? I'm curious as to your reasoning of buying from them as opposed to pctorque since I also plan on using Express Pro when I buy an 8790 (once the higher rez LCD becomes available). Does 1beyond do something special to bring their Clevos into the Avid spec?
I'm also trying to decide whether to buy Boris Red/Continum or the Adobe Video Collection, sounds like you like AE, but did you consider Boris?
Sorry for all the questions, but to my knowlege you're one of the only ones using the Clevo/Avid XPro combo.

Bring on the questions, Bob! I put a lot of work and research into this, I'm happy to share what I've learned.

For me, the bottom line was support and reliability. I decided on an amount I was willing to pay above normal Sager retail, and was able to negotiate with 1Beyond down to that price. I value the support and experience of a company like 1Beyond. The kicker is that their systems are considered Avid validated- if I were having an XpressPro problem on a Sager, who would support it? At a certain point in the Avid tech support process, Avid would tell me sorry, that's not a validated system. I'd be SOL. 1Beyond doesn't appear on Avid's website, but they are in fact a validated system configurator.

And 1Beyond will be my first line of tech support. In some cases, they'd repair/replace the the system before I even got to Avid tech support.

1Beyond came very higly reccommended. I spoke on the phone over a couple weeks with my regional Avid Sales rep, trying to work out the best possible laptop. We even met in person one day, with another Avid employee. We discussed a few companies, and the rep suggested 1beyond as my best choice. They're a company of engineers, not just editors or computer enthusiasts. They're located right by Avid's HQ in Massachussets, and they staff many former Avid employeees. Avid used their laptops in their demo booth at NAB last year.

I first got into desktop DV editing with a Matrox RT2000 card, and to this day, I can't get it to work properly. I had so much downtime with that system, with Matrox constantly telling me that the computer was the problem. Every support issue would be unsolvable and the eventual solution was always to reformat the boot drive and reinstall everything from scratch. Old problems would disappear and new ones would show up. I got so frustrated with the tech support nonsense, I even built a system identical to Matrox's test system, down tot he soundcard board revision number. I continued to have the same sort of trouble with both the system and tech support.

Matrox in particular may have been a bad company, but it seems that all DV solutions have similar issues. I'm very concerned with having a solid line of tech support when problems arise, and I'm willing to pay a few bucks extra to have that.

Check out 1beyond's credo and customer testimonials. if they're half as good as they appear to be, I'll be very happy.

Also.

When I first spoke with Terry, the president of 1beyond, he said that I would not be able to install XpressPro on this system myself. He said there were technical issues that his guys had developed solututions for.

I suppose this might be true, or he might be underestimating my computer skills. I can't really imagine what installation issues exist that I couldn't work out.

As a sole-proprietorship, the buck stops with me and the responsibility all sits on my shoulders. Clients don't sypathise with the BS Matrox put me through. And every minute I spend tinking inside my computer (as much as I love it) is a client call I'm not making. So the piece of mind of having someone else responsible for the technical issues is valuable to me.

Inkling-
You'd think that with such a close working relationship 1beyond would be included in the list of notebooks "approved" by Avid, but they aren't. So if they really wanted to get technical, they wouldn't have to give you anymore help than they would a Sagerite. Or were you referring to the ex-Avid employees at 1beyond as the ones offering the tech support?
Also I don't see your 3217 on 1beyond's site. There's a 3017 and a 3216, but I couldn't find the 3217. It's hard to believe they wouldn't have posted it yet, especially if they're already selling them, but maybe they'll announce it at NAB.

I'm the first 3217 they've built. You're right, its not on the site yet.

According to my regional Avid sales rep, there are a few validated systems/vendors which do not appear on the site. DVline(.com) is one of these vendors, as well. He says they give him hell about it all the time. He was evasive about the reason, which he initially described as internal politics. He also explained that Avid is waiting to do a complete site overhaul and isn't paying for updates in the meantime.

Another explanation I heard was more political in nature, having to do with which vendors the product was being demo-ed on, and some other crap that I don't remember.

But don't take my word for it. Call up Avid sales and ask the sales guy. If he doesn't have any info, ask for your regional sales person.

Now, you might point out that if this is the first 3217 that 1Beyond has built, how could it be Avid-validated? The answer is that Avid requires the system configurators to do the validation themselves, according to an Avid "Integrator's Guide."

To answer your earlier question, no, I've never used any of the Boris products myself. I hear great things about them. But I'm trying to avoid spreading myself too thin, so I'm sticking to the largest and most standard programs. I'll probably dabble with Boris in the next few months, though. Do you have a preference?

Preference? No, I'm just starting out. The company I work for is in the process of buying an Avid-approved HP8000 workstation with Express Pro/Mojo, but I was going to build a personal Sager 8790 just like yours (but with a larger battery and no tuner) and install Express Pro on it so that I could also work at home and do video recordings in the field. But now you have me a little concerned that there's some kind of trick that 1beyond does during the installation of XPro. But it is comforting to know that XPro will work with the 8790.
By the way, I thought it was your theory that Windows wouldn't handle more than a gig of RAM effectively, yet you ended up with 2 gigs. Is that for safety sake and have you done any editing the required more than a gig?

I never found authroitative data on the RAM issue, but I did have several content creators tell me that they use their second gigabyte frequently. Here are three discussion threads on the issue which I started or in which I participated:

Offical Avid Xpress Pro Forum

Maximum PC Forums

Notebook Forums I'm really not sure what to make of Terry's claim that the XpressPro installation is so tricky. I reformat my boot drives twice a year, so they'll eventually be talking me through the XpressPro install. But probably not soon enough to be useful to you, Bob. I haven't received the notebook yet- the actual construction date is tomorrow (Thurs, April 15th). I'll be talking to the sytem builder tomorrow night, so I'll ask him more about it and let you know anything I learn.

FYI, according to Jim at 1Beyond, the Mojo will not work with this model's motherboard chipset- the Intel 865. If you get the 8790 and try it with your own or your company's mojo, I'd be interested in the results.

I'm getting the 12-cell battery, too, as a backup. I got all three options- subwoofer, TVtuner, and the 12-cell. If I can use the TV tuner for capture, I will. But if not, I don't want it; I'll just keep the suboofer in there (except when I'm using the 12 cell for backup).

If Jim is right about the 865 chipset and Mojo being incompatible it looks like the 8790 is the wrong notebook for the field recordings I'm trying to do and I'll have to look for something else.
I had heard about some firewire overloading problems when using an 865 with external storage or an add-on PCI card based controller at the same time as Mojo. But if I'm using my internal drives I'm hoping I can use the two together. If you hear any more info on this please let me know as it could be a deal breaker. Thanks for the tip.