Could my laptop handle video editing?

mrchainsaw

mrchainsaw

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I got it used and I believe it was released around 2001 or 2002. It's Pentium III 1.06 gHz, 512 MB RAM, Windows 2000 Professional SP 4, Radeon 16 MB video card (that's what it should have but I can't find it in my device manager), USB 1.1, and no Firewire port. Is it even possible to upload video to it? Could a Firewire port be added or is it even necessary?

Ignoring computer requirements, I was leaning towards a MiniDV camcorder. Are there camcorders that record to SD cards? That way I could upload through a card reader.
 
Sure it could... but it would be extremely slow.

I think they make PCIMA firewire cards if you have one of those slots (you should have 1 at least).
 
[quote name='Vinny']Sure it could... but it would be extremely slow.

I think they make PCIMA firewire cards if you have one of those slots (you should have 1 at least).[/quote] Really, extremely slow? What if I bought an older camcorder and editing software from like 2000-2002?
 
Here's what you do chainsaw... you buy a PCIMA firewire card to add the firewire port to your PC. Camcorders use firewire for video transfer, so that's required.

And it won't be slow to edit... it will be slow to render the final file. Capturing is real time, so if its an hour video, it will take an hour to capture. Video is captured in avi format and it will be pretty huge file... 10+ gigs.
 
If you plug a DVD burner into USB 1.1 slot, then it'll be painfully slow to burn. Imagine burning a 3GB - 4GB file at 1MB per second (ballpark). It'll take you over an hour.
 
As someone who edits video, you don't want to do that. Well to be more specific, if you're actually going to edit stuff and do color correction, you'll need a better computer without a doubt. If you're just moving it over from camcorder to dvd you should be all right, even if it takes all day to get done.

You'll first have to copy it to the laptop. Then you'll have to render the files to a MPEG2 format. Then you'll have to burn it.
 
What he said. The computer is fine if all you are doing is minor chopping and lacing videos together to then put on a dvd. I have a 600MHz computer and it does fine.
 
I don't understand. Why would my computer perform so poorly even if I bought software that came out the same time my computer did, when it was relatively powerful?
 
Video editing has always required higher end computer specs. If you get (much) older versions of Ulead or Premiere then your laptop will edit fine, but your hard drive is still slow. Back then a lot of people who edit videos use SCSI hard drives, which read/write/transfer faster than a typical IDE HD. Your laptop is most likely running on a 4200RPM HD, which has a very slow read/write/transfer rate. So you'll do a lot of waiting as the computer will pause a lot when you edit videos.
 
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