suggest lappy & video camera pls

JasperKat

Hi guys,

I'm looking to buy a laptop & video camera for my wife, she intends to use it to video individual students at dance classes, then she wants to burn a copy of the film & give to each student. She doesn't want to do anything else except email.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Tia

Jasper

Tom Dunne

There are two approaches you can take to this.

Option one is the budget approach - use a webcam with a bog standard laptop and dvd burner. The results won't be great, simple as that.

Option two is a lot more expensive - get a digital video camera with a firewire port (i-link is what Sony calls them) and get a laptop also with a firewire port. Practically all laptops in this price range would have a DVD burner. You would also need at least 512Mb of RAM.

JasperKat

Thanks for the response, Tom,

I'm going to go down the option two route, can you or anyone else give me pointers towards what make/model/spec of laptop I should be going for, pls?

Also, what digital video camera to go for?

Tia

Jasper

Tom Dunne

I don't know an awful lot about video cameras - just make sure it is digital and has the aforementioned port.

As for laptops, any model that has the spec I mentioned above should do the trick - just look at the Dell website or laptopsdirect.ie. You would probably be looking for a Centrino model, as it sounds like portability would be important. Also, a large hard-drive is quite important as the video from digital video cameras isn't compressed, AFAIR.

So, look for the following spec:
Centrino
At least 512Mb of RAM
At least 60 Gb of hard disk
Firewire port
DVD burner

unklerosco

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/forumdisplay.php?f=404

The audio/video editing forum would be ur best bet for some answers...

Sonys latest VCs burn straight to mini dvds that play in dvd players... This would save her getting a laptop but then if u want to edit the footage ud need the laptop..

There's also a range of HD VCs out at the mo, not sure what they're like..

On the laptop front, Video encoding is one of the tuffest tasks a pc can do.. A cheap dell laptop will take forever to encode the footage so get the best u can, Get an INTEL cpu.. much faster than AMD at video encoding..

JasperKat

Thanks for all your advice guys,

I'm currently looking at the following lappy's for this task, & bearing in mind earlier comments which I'll take in to account, any recommendations for/against any of them?

Acer Travelmate 4062 LMI
Pentium M-740 1.7Ghz / 60gb / 512DDr2 / DVD dual layer (not sure exactly what that is?)

Fujitsu-Siemens Amilo pro v2060
Pentium M-1.7 same spec as above

Any thoughts on toshibas instead of the above makes?

Whichever one I go for, do I need to have s-video out port?
Also will need it to connect to a projector, what type of port is needed for that?

Mods: if it's more suited to the audio/video forum pls move it, thanks.

Jasper

unklerosco

That spec seems to be grand... An extra 512mb ram would be nice.. Dual layer just means u can burn onto dual layer dvds(twice the capacity of a normal dvd)

To connect to a projector u can use the s-video.. Most laptops come with S-video out, usually labeled as tv out.. once the projector has s-video in ur grand..

As for what brand to go for i've no idea...

Have u ever done video editing like this before??

JasperKat

Thanks for reply unclerosco,

Taking a closer look at Acer Travelmate 4062 LMI it doesn't appear to have s-video or am i wrong?

What other port is normally used to connect to a projector?

no tbh, I've never done any video editing but I'm obviously about to & don't mind learning I've told wifey the end result won't be award-winning stuff, but want it to obviously be half-way decent.

I've posted in the audio/video forum for advice on a digital video camera, hope someone replies cos I've absolutely no idea what i need to look out for.

Jasper

Tom Dunne

Projectors usually take a wide range of ports, including the standard VGA/monitor port which comes built in on all laptops. S-video is more commonly used to connect to a TV. In my own experience, connecting the laptop to the projector via s-video gives a poor quality signal in comparison to VGA.

Anyway, what's all this talk about s-video?

To get the video from the camera to the laptop, you need the firewire port.

On the video editing front - you can start off with Windows Movie Maker (free with Windows XP). It isn't too bad, but has enough features to give you an idea of what can and can't be done.

Getting an idea on each make/model can be a tough one - you will hear horror stories about both and you will hear great things about both. I personally have no experience of either brand, so you should try asking this over on the laptops forum.

tech

Dell D 610 are the way to go with a 3 year warranty !