How best to expand laptop for video work?

[Tony Lewis]

I want to start some basic editing (Windows Movie Maker) of videos
taken from my camcorder (firewire output) and get them onto CD or DVD.


My laptop is a Samsung running XP and has Mobile Intel Pentium III-S,
1200 MHz with 256mB RAM. I struggle to have more than 6gb free disk
space.

The laptop has two PCMCIA, two USB 1 and 1 firewire plus CD writer/DVD
play.

I'm thinking I need an external firewire hard drive, external DVD
writer but I'm worried that plugging in camcorder, hard drive and
writer together will not give me the throughput required on a single
firewire.

I could add a USB 2 PCMCIA card.

Is more RAM going to be useful? How much?

Any pointers, recommendations etc most welcome.


--
TonyL

[Jacques Ciana]

"Tony Lewis" > a écrit dans le message de news:
...
> I want to start some basic editing (Windows Movie Maker) of videos
> taken from my camcorder (firewire output) and get them onto CD or DVD.
>
>
> My laptop is a Samsung running XP and has Mobile Intel Pentium III-S,
> 1200 MHz with 256mB RAM. I struggle to have more than 6gb free disk
> space.
>
> The laptop has two PCMCIA, two USB 1 and 1 firewire plus CD writer/DVD
> play.
>
> I'm thinking I need an external firewire hard drive, external DVD
> writer but I'm worried that plugging in camcorder, hard drive and
> writer together will not give me the throughput required on a single
> firewire.
>
> I could add a USB 2 PCMCIA card.
>
> Is more RAM going to be useful? How much?
>
> Any pointers, recommendations etc most welcome.
>
>
> --
> TonyL

The firewire is specially design to handle video. I have an older Sony
(850MHz. 256 RAM) with internal HDD 30GB. With the time I found the hard
drive too small so I added two external Lacie HDD (80 & 160GB) I added also
a Sony DVD +-burner. Every thing works fine without any problem even when
capturing video thru a camcorder connected to the second firewire port of
the Sony burner. I should add that I am working under win 2000 pro and NTSF
file system. Your 6 GB drive is definitively too small: one hour of AVI
video needs somewhere 15 to 20 GB of space

[Tony Lewis]

On Mon, 16 Feb 2004 18:25:37 +0100, "Jacques Ciana"
> wrote:

>
>"Tony Lewis" > a écrit dans le message de news:
...
>> I want to start some basic editing (Windows Movie Maker) of videos
>> taken from my camcorder (firewire output) and get them onto CD or DVD.
>>
>>
>> My laptop is a Samsung running XP and has Mobile Intel Pentium III-S,
>> 1200 MHz with 256mB RAM. I struggle to have more than 6gb free disk
>> space.
>>
>> The laptop has two PCMCIA, two USB 1 and 1 firewire plus CD writer/DVD
>> play.
>>
>> I'm thinking I need an external firewire hard drive, external DVD
>> writer but I'm worried that plugging in camcorder, hard drive and
>> writer together will not give me the throughput required on a single
>> firewire.
>>
>> I could add a USB 2 PCMCIA card.
>>
>> Is more RAM going to be useful? How much?
>>
>> Any pointers, recommendations etc most welcome.
>>
>>
>> --
>> TonyL
>
>The firewire is specially design to handle video. I have an older Sony
>(850MHz. 256 RAM) with internal HDD 30GB. With the time I found the hard
>drive too small so I added two external Lacie HDD (80 & 160GB) I added also
>a Sony DVD +-burner. Every thing works fine without any problem even when
>capturing video thru a camcorder connected to the second firewire port of
>the Sony burner.

Jacques, that's very encouraging. Do you simply daisy chain the
devices or are you using a hub?

>I should add that I am working under win 2000 pro and NTSF
>file system.

NTSF doesn't improve disk performance does it?

>Your 6 GB drive is definitively too small: one hour of AVI
>video needs somewhere 15 to 20 GB of space
>
It's a 30Gb but it always seems to be full, so I would hope now to get
100gb or more external like you have and stream the AVI from camcorder
to it.


--
TonyL

[Tony Lewis]

On Mon, 16 Feb 2004 22:06:06 -0800, =?Utf-8?B?c3R1YXJ0?=
> wrote:

>Although windows xp works best with 512Mb ram or more,256Mb is enough to start video editing.
>I would consider getting an external Usb 2 HDD along with your PCMCIA card.
>It does not really matter about the external dvd rewriter either firewire or usb 2 will do.
>All th Best.....
>

Thanks for your response. Is there a reason to prefer the USB2 rather
than firewire?


--
TonyL

[stuart]

Although windows xp works best with 512Mb ram or more,256Mb is enough to start video editing.
I would consider getting an external Usb 2 HDD along with your PCMCIA card.
It does not really matter about the external dvd rewriter either firewire or usb 2 will do.
All th Best.....