Video editing on my Acer 7741G-7017 Laptop

Hey guys, I bought this laptop a few months ago and I love it. I have recently gotten into video editing, and at this point I am just using windows movie maker.

Issue: When trying to scroll through the video using the mouse I often get lag, and it takes awhile to catch up. This makes editing slow and frustrating. I want to upgrade this laptop so I can do things like this with ease and no lag. I am not sure what to upgrade to get the most bang for the buck.

#1 is there benchmark software I can run on the laptop to point me to the bottle neck?

#2 Hardware upgrade
HDD - Currently I have 500gb 5600rpm drive. Would upgrading to a 7800rpm HDD make much difference? How important is the cache when video editing?

RAM- I currently have 4gb DDR 3, how helpful would it be to upgrade to 8gb?

CPU- It says I have a intel core i5-460M CPU (2.53, 3MB CACHE). Can I even upgrade this? Would that make much difference?

#3- Settings
I see that I have several process working at all times, is there a way to set up profiles so not so many are running?
Also can I adjust how my RAM is distributed that would help with video editing? If so how?


Thank you guys for any help you can provide!

Randy

 

also might be worth updating the editing software. i used to use pinnacle but now found cyberlink power director much faster at editing and very fast at rendering but of course they cost as well. try the 30 day trials at google.

benchmark software 3dmark06 and vantage http://www.futuremark.com/

 

Currently I am using the windows movie maker they released for windows 7 and it is pretty good. I may try the cyberlink out, I would like to have more options.

Thank you,
Randy

 

PowerDirector 9 - World 1st 64-bit consumer video editing software

 

If you're working with HD content, you might want to look into upgrading to 8gb RAM, and a quad core processor but that would probably necessitate a new laptop.

 

I would suggest more ram like 8gigs and what graphics card do you have? Also, your laptop hd drive is kind of slow, I do suggest a 7200rpm external hd, especially if you have an esata port use it. I have done many video editing in the past and having your video render to an external is much faster because you don't boggle down your main hd.

As of the lag you speak of it could be your laptop, but also the program itself. Are you messing around with HD videos here? I have yet to use movie maker in win7 to see how well it works (only use premiere).

 

if you are editing hd content id upgrade all those components you listed, including cpu to a quad core if possible.
and try power director as mrdj has suggested for more performance and flxibility. its as easy to use as movie maker

 

For editing:

CPU: How fast it can process & render - the faster the cpu the faster you can render. So its not needed to have a fast cpu if you dont mind starting an encoding job and leaving it for longer periods of time.

If your doing a lot of editing and actually waiting for something to finish then you need a faster cpu.

RAM - Pretty much the preview buffer and stuff for the video while editing, more RAM in general can help the editor run more smoothly. However 4GB is enough just wont have as long of a preview. I edit video that is 6004x1200 on my desktop with 4GB of RAM just fine.

HDD - Depending on the encoding your doing the HDD can become the limiting factor in speed, the files have to be read from the disk while editing, and read & written while encoded.

Really you want a 2nd HDD for this so you can have the source material reading from one drive and being written to another.

When I say it depends on the type of encoding you do, that means how high quality and the settings used. A ultra high quality H264 encoding will not bottleneck your HDD it is super cpu intensive and even with my 3.6ghz quad core my HDD is not even close to limiting the encoding speed. However if I was doing a simple xvid encoding that the cpu can tear through easily the HDD would actually be the slowest part of the encoding process.

Its a good idea to have a fast drive no matter what and since its probably the cheapest of all upgrades it would be the first thing I would do, followed by RAM since its the 2nd cheapest and usefull, and last would be the CPU.

 

^^^^^

Listen to this man. He's the king of encoding! (Don't let the beard and silly dancing fool you).