Video editing laptop. Review and comment on this spec, please

[martynmoore]

Hi all.

I'm a film-maker and over the past couple of years I've found myself needing to edit on the road. I sometimes work from a campervan and offer clients the chance to see rough edits on the same or next day.

My old Macbook Pro is struggling with the workload so I'm looking for a fast new Windows laptop to run Adobe Creative Cloud, usually Premiere Pro and Photoshop.

The spec below is my dream machine but the price is just beyond my budget right now. I can either wait six months and struggle on, or pull back on the spec and save money.

So my question for the forum is, for video editing, where gaming speed is not essential, and if a video render takes a few seconds longer, it's not a big deal, where would you look to save a few quid? I need to allow the software to use the graphics card for good quality previews (Adobe calls it GPU-assisted rendering) during editing and outputting still needs to be fairly quick.

Here's the spec:

Chassis & Display
Cosmos Series: 17.3" Matte Full HD LED Widescreen (1920x1080)
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™ i7 Quad Core Processor 6700HQ (2.6GHz, 3.5GHz Turbo)
Memory (RAM)
16GB HyperX IMPACT 1600MHz SODIMM DDR3 (2 x 8GB)
Graphics Card
NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 950M - 2.0GB DDR3 - DX12 (Special Offer)
1st Hard Disk
500GB Samsung 850 EVO 2.5" SSD, SATA 6Gb/s (upto 540MB/sR | 520MB/sW)
2nd Hard Disk
500GB WD BLACK 2.5" WD5000LPLX, SATA 6 Gb/s, 32MB CACHE (7200 rpm)
1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
2nd/3rd HDD HARD DRIVE OPTICAL BAY CADDY (12.7mm)
Memory Card Reader
Internal 9 in 1 Card Reader (MMC/RSMMC/SD: Mini, XC & HC/MS: Pro & Duo)
Thermal Paste
STANDARD THERMAL PASTE FOR SUFFICIENT COOLING
Sound Card
Via® 2 Channel High Definition Audio + MIC/Headphone Jack
Wireless/Wired Networking
GIGABIT LAN & WIRELESS INTEL® AC-8260 M.2 (867Mbps, 802.11AC) + BLUETOOTH
USB Options
3 x USB 3.0 PORTS + 1 x USB 2.0 PORT AS STANDARD
Battery
Cosmos Series 6 Cell Lithium Ion Battery (48.84WH)
Power Cable
1 x UK Power Lead & 120W AC Adaptor
Keyboard Language
COSMOS 17" SERIES UK KEYBOARD WITH NUMBER PAD
Operating System
Genuine Windows 10 Home 64 Bit - inc DVD & Licence
Operating System Language
United Kingdom - English Language
DVD Recovery Media
Windows 10 (64-bit) Home DVD with paper sleeve
Mouse
INTEGRATED 2 BUTTON TOUCHPAD MOUSE
Webcam
INTEGRATED 2.0 MEGAPIXEL WEBCAM

So what can I change to save some money without a catastrophic effect on video editing performance?

Look forward to your suggestions.

Martyn

 

[RType23]

Hi Martyn - I don't think there's much there to par down. The cost difference on the cpu and ram arn't going to make much difference. May I ask what you're shooting on and codecs used? I'm just getting started on LightWorks Pro having been away from editing for 8 years, mostly for filming lectures and interviews. I used to work in post production as an engineer with a bit of basic editing / ingest & mastering out if we were busy. The studio was Avid Media Composer / Nitris Symphony based with a couple of Final Cut Pro systems. I've the Octane 1 and its a real shame it doesn't use my 980m GTX card.

 

[Oussebon]

It's probably worth mentioning that adding the GTX 950M to the 17" Cosmos causes a jump in price such that its value compared to other options dips sharply. For instance it's within about £100 of the 17.3" Optimus Pro with a GTX 965M.

CUDA cores:
940M - 384
950M - 640 (+67% cores)
960M - 640 too
965M - 1024 (+60% cores)

So for +~£110 you're getting 60% more CUDA cores, which assuming your software uses CUDA cores to render video could be a significant upgrade over the Cosmos. But obviously that's tricky as even the Cosmos build is just outside your range.

One option that might be open to you, whether you want to go for the Cosmos or save more and go for the Optimus Pro, is to ditch the SSD and add one in yourself later. You'd be benefitting from the CPU and GPU upgrade (that I assume you're getting) over your old MacBook Pro for the video work until you can afford the SSD, which I assume has more benefit for the photo work. If the alternative is not getting any upgrade at all until you can buy the whole thing in one go, and you're really struggling, this may be the way to go.

 

[martynmoore]

Thanks RType23. I do feel that pushing the spec as far as possible gives me a longer-term proposition. And I can afford this machine if I continue to keep busy this year. Oussebon has suggested I look at the Optimus Pro, which I will do. I think I was put off by the material used for the case, which is probably silly!

Almost everything I edit is shot in AVCHD format (Sony and Panasonic cameras). The exceptions are the footage shot on GoPro and Nikon D800. I output most productions as H264 mp4 files for use online but some do end up on DVD, mastered using Adobe Encore.

 

[martynmoore]

Thanks Oussebon. Lots to think about there. I just have no idea how much faster 60 per cent more CUDA cores would make it. Sixty per cent faster would be significant, but I bet it doesn't work like that.

I know its stupid, but I don't like the look of the Optimus Pro as much as the Cosmos. Irrational, but I can't help it. I've been looking at the MS Surface Book because it's beautiful but falls short on spec. My studio-based desktop came from PCspecialist and I can't find anybody to compete on spec vs price.

Premiere does use CUDA cores to render, so I'd be crazy not to look again at the Optimus, given your advice. It's just not as pretty...

Anything will be an improvement over the MacBook Pro. It's eight years old.

 

[Oussebon]

Sixty per cent faster would be significant, but I bet it doesn't work like that.

It might sometimes actually, I've seen some software that only really cares for core count rather than speed or just about anything else when rendering (such that overclocking makes no real difference, and there's a 1:1 scaling in CUDA cores and performance improvements). But yes, I don't think Premiere Pro is like that most of the time. It also seems to depend on what you're doing in Premiere Pro.

This video https://youtu.be/D1eUEhrtI5I?t=70 shows a huge increase with a GTX 980ti over a GTX 970 in some cases, but not so much when there aren't many effects being used.

It also seems quite hard to find benchmarks of different GPUs with Premiere Pro and rendering, unlike for gaming or 3D rendering in CAD, Octane, etc. But there's this:
https://www.studio1productions.com/Articles/Premiere-Benchmark.htm

Obviously that's not just core count having an effect, and the render time isn't reduced in the same proportion as an increase in core count (e.g. 100% more cores doesn't halve the render time), but it does seem to generally equate that more powerful GPUs dish out meaningfully faster rendering. The synthetic bench used in the studio-1 article seems stacked on core count which is why the 780 beats out the GTX 980 despite being a much weaker gaming card. The 'real' bench they use shows the cards' relative ranking being a little more more in line with their gaming performance. The 760 still outperforms the 960, despite the 960 being the better gaming card usually, which might be due to core count, but also other factors such as memory bandwidth or bus width (higher on the 760) could have an effect. I've seen the 960 lose to the 760 in some gaming benches also due to that. The GTX 965M has GDDR5 VRAM rather than the DDR3 of the Cosmos's 950M so (afaik) has over double the bandwidth.

So no hard and fast figures but that's the best I can do in terms of an indication of the differences between the cards.