Which Laptop Best For Video Editing?

  So you might be looking for a new Windows laptop for some video editing Well that's great because I'm surrounded by laptops, currently And I'm gonna help you make your choice. The idea of this article is to inform you about the important factors of a video editing laptop So that you can make your own choice. 

And the first thing that you need to do is figure out which kind of laptop user that you are. And the way that I see it is that there are mainly three groups: "The Travelers" Which are those that edit everywhere, even in the middle of the rain forest. Then you have "The Location Editors". People that drag their laptop around but mostly they have a desk of some sort. And finally are "The Desktop Users" that just really want to have a laptop for just in case. Now starting with the real editing traveler I'm gonna take the brand-new LG gram with me as an example. So  it's also just built for the travelling editor The first factor is weight and size. The LG gram is super lightweight, you know. You can even throw this around as a frisbee and that is great because it is a very important feature. Your luggage weight is limited when flying Or when you're carrying the laptop around in your backpack while hiking. You better want to have a laptop that is lightweight, etc. The same goes for its size. And although the LG gram is super thin, It is larger than most laptops but that is because of its 17-inch display Which I actually find a very big pro. I believe that a larger display, which is color accurate, is very much needed As you will always edit your videos solely on that display. So an IPS display is advised. It's not like editing at home where you can easily hook up an external monitor to your laptop In such a case, that laptop display is not super important.

 The LG Gram also has a higher resolution, giving you double the amount of pixels. Not necessary, but very nice to have as you'll see more detail in your video and photo work. Then point number three which is battery life. Super important, of course. The LG gram promises 19-hours plus which you need to take with a grain of salt. If you're doing heavier work then battery life decreases a lot, of course. Almost every brand is a little too excited about their battery performance. If you have a laptop in mind, try to find a battery test video. On the LG gram I was able to get about six hours while editing in Adobe Premiere Pro Which is very good, by the way. This was, however, on battery saving mode. And this brings me to performance. Victor actually taught me some very good things to pay attention to. The LG gram has a 1.8 gigahertz quad-core processor which is not that fast. However, this is the base clock of the laptop. And because that base clock is slower, the laptop is also able to have such a long battery life. If you're simply editing your videos without effects, You could put your laptop on battery saving and work around that base clock of 1.8 gigahertz But when you do need more performance, Then the turbo boost of the laptop will kick in which can go up to 4.6 gigahertz. Of course, this will use a lot of battery. So don't be fooled by the base clock of a processor. A lower base clock could actually be positive as it saves up on battery life. Look at the turbo frequency as well. The memory is another important component of a laptop, you know. You want to get at least 16 gigabytes of memory for full HD video editing and 32 when editing 4k. Of course, 64 is even better but if your budget is an issue then only go for 64 when doing 3D work. Or if you're 3D-ing a lot in Adobe After Effects. Now, I thought that the speed of the memory was also important but Victor told me that it was negligible. These days most laptops have DDR4 which is the only thing to look out for. Even most DDR3 memory won't give you much difference. 

Then comes the GPU or graphical cards and there's a little misunderstanding with people here. Video editing is still very processor based. It is getting better with things like Adobe's Mercury engine but it's still minimal. The GPU mostly kicks in when using effects and when rendering. And still there are many effects that don't even utilize the GPU. So is a good graphical card important? Yes. But if you're solely cutting clips or using very basic effects, No. The LG Gram actually has no dedicated graphical cards. And I think the reason for that is because they wanted to create a super thin lightweight laptop. You have to understand that there's no laptop out there that can tick all of the boxes. There are always compromises and with laptops for traveling, that's gonna be performance. Editing full HD goes perfectly fine on this laptop even with some basic effects, no problem. If you're shooting 4k, it is best to work in a proxy workflow. Now this brings me to the following: Connectivity. With little ports here on the side of the left top. Now Victor gave me one very important advice: Make sure that your laptop has Thunderbolt. Where is it? Right here. This is Thunderbolt. Because you can connect various dongles to it Like multiple USB ports, but also an Ethernet port, display ports an even an external graphical card So if your laptop doesn't have a dedicated card such as the LG Gram, you could always connect an external one to it This will give you great performance increasements when working with effects. Of course, that doesn't make it so travel friendly anymore.

 So that's something for yourself to decide. Furthermore, simple USB ports are needed. 3.0 or higher is recommended as you'll be using that for data transfer. And what both Victor and I found very important was an SD card reader. My MSI laptop doesn't have that, which we'll get into in a moment, But also the LG Gram doesn't have that. It does have like a micro SD card reader which is good if you're like in drone pilots or a GoPro shooter, But most cameras use SD cards and when I'm traveling, I don't like to take dongles with me. This laptop right here and a charger. That's everything I want to take with me. And this brings me to the last factor that you should look into when purchasing a new laptop And that is durability. Now, the LG gram is made out of a mixture of aluminum and carbon which makes it super strong. No, I'm not afraid to throw is laptop around, so that's good. Now if this was a plastic case like this, very old Acer laptop right here, which is a very cheap laptop, I'm not sure if I'll take this on my traveling with me because it will break pretty fast. So whatever factor to take in account when traveling, durability is important. Those were the tips for The Traveling video editor, guys. If you wanna learn more about this laptop in specific, then you can click the first link in the description below. Or take the information with you to make your own choice. That is the main purpose of this video.

 All right, The next category: The Location Editor. Weight and size is still important as you'll be traveling with it but you won't be hiking with it. So it's not a big deal if it's a little bulkier and heavier, but the MSI laptop is a great example of that. However, I would like the MSI to have a larger display. It's a very good display. It's very color accurate. But when a client asks me to edit a video, for example, right after an event in the hotel room, then it is nice to have like a bigger work space. I might be able to bring a secondary monitor with me since I'm traveling with gear anyways, So that's something for yourself to decide. 15-inch works for small edits, but when I'm working on a larger project then 17-inch display is very useful. Battery life. Don't worry too much about this. You're editing on location so most of the time you have a power socket nearby. And that one moment that you're editing on a train, that 2 or 3 hour battery life when editing is sufficient. What you want to have is performance. A quad-core for full HD, and a 6, or even an 8 core processor for editing 4k, is recommended. And just like before, look at the base and the turbo speed. In this case that base clock can be a little bit higher as your batteries shouldn't be so important. Memory is the same: at least 16 gigs or 32 or higher when editing 4k. A graphical card: Yes. This time you're trading in a little portability so you want to have a dedicated graphical card in place.

 Location Editors usually have a tight deadline so you need performance and fast rendering. Basically a graphical card has these very tiny processors, a lot of them, NVIDIA calls them CUDA cores and AMD OpenCL. The more you have of these, the better and that's mostly the general rule about these video cards. I often get the question, like, "Is my GTX 1060 good for video editing?" All that depends. What are you editing? And of course, what is your budget? So if you're not too familiar with computer hardware, looking at the amount of CUDA cores is a great start. And so you can make your own choice. Do I want to spend a little more on a laptop that has a graphical card with maybe 200 more CUDA cores? Connectivity. Again, that Thunderbolt port. Super important. Sometimes the location that you're editing already has a bunch of monitors there Or there's an Ethernet connection. Maybe you're bringing your own external storage. It doesn't matter. That thunderbolt connection can handle it all. Location editors shouldn't be too worried about dongles. I mean you're bringing a lot of gear with you anyways, and again, you're not hiking or camping. And finally is durability. Yes, make sure that it is strong. It doesn't have to be carbon. I mean aluminum, or like this very hard premium plastic, is fine as well. Which brings me to the last group which are the Desktop Users that actually want to have a laptop. Tip Number One: buy a desktop as that is a lot cheaper. But hey, you wanna have laptop. So let's look at that. Size and weight is not something that you should even think about Because 99% of the time you'll have your laptop set on your desk at home. This means that the display is not something to think about either As you probably want to hook up an external monitor or two to it. Battery life? Nah. If you can get half an hour out of your laptop while sitting on your couch, you'd be good. You can walk back to your desk after that. Performance? Yes This is not a good example of that because this is a very old laptop.

 But performance? Yes all the way because you're sacrificing everything about portability so that's why you want to focus on performance. You wanna have like a good processor and a dedicated graphical card in here. And the amount of cores of a processor is important like mentioned before. Now the difference between a four core processor to eight is definitely worth it As Premiere Pro utilizes those cores to spread out intensive tasks. But every core has a speed as well. The faster the speed of a core, the faster those tasks can be completed. So in theory, a CPU with four cores running at 3 gigahertz is slower than an 8 core running at 2 gigahertz. But there's a threshold. The difference between a 10-core a 12-core is not gonna be that big of a deal anymore. Here, it's better to take that 10-core that has a faster clock speed than the 12-core. Memory. We talked about that before, a graphical card as well. So here's a very good tip that I got from Victor: if you're short on budget, look for gaming laptops. These usually are very bulky and super heavy but have great specs that work for video editing as well. All of these gaming laptops are made out of plastic, cheap plastic, so they're not so durable. But you don't need that as it just sits on your desk And you get some cool RGB lighting and, I don't know, dragons or something. So those are the three groups of laptop users. I quickly want to tackle the last group which are those on a very low budget. Look out for a secondhand workstation laptop something with at least 4 cores and 60 gigs of memory. Old hardware it's not always that bad. In fact my very first computer that I bought when I graduated from film school still works great and that thing is seven years old. I can still perfectly edit Full HD footage on it. And let's say that I can ask $500 for it if I would sell it second hand. You will not get better or even equal performance in the latest generation hardware for that same price if you would buy a new one. The one thing to keep in mind when buying a second-hand laptop is not to expect anything about the battery life. It has been used so it's not gonna perform good anymore. If battery is important to you, then make sure that you can swap the battery out for a brand new one. And with that last tip.

• Share
• Share
• Share

Related Post