BootsnAll Travel Community

Hi guys I want to make a documentary style film of an African wedding that I am due to attend and I was wondering what kind of camcorder or film camera I should be buying to get a good enough quality of moving picture. Also I plan on editing the film myself and would need a laptop to do this. So advice please would a top of the range camcorder be good enough or do I have to shell out on a semi professional film camera. What is the minimum requirement of laptop spec that will be good enough to do all the editing. Come on guys share your knowledge as I don't want to waste money or not spend enough.

Can't advise on the camera, but maybe can help with the laptop. My expertise is with audio... but I've done some video stuff, and specs are similar.

A/V is very resource intensive, so basically, you want the fastest machine you can get. I'm assuming you'll be using pro or semi-pro software like Avid or Premiere or the like, and not Windows Movie Maker... Machines aimed at gaming can work, because they're tweaked out as well. Processor speed I'd say at least a 3.0ghz P4, 1.8ghz Pentium M, AMD64 2.0ghz, or Apple Powerbook G4, depending on your hardware preference. A dual core processor would certainly be ideal. I'm pretty sure the P4 on laptops are on their way out, as the mobile Pentium processors are much more efficient... but that means you might be able to find a used one for cheap.

You'll need at least 1gb of ram, if it will take more, max it out. Preferably dual channel.

7200 rpm hard drive. Many laptops don't come with one, usually either 4200 or 5400. If you find a machine you like, and it doesn't have a 7200 drive, and the price of one that does is considerably higher, just buy one separately and put it in... I'll let you do the math for whichever is more cost effective. Swapping drives in laptops tends to be very easy.

Firewire port, ideally 6 pin. Macs usually have 6, PC's sometime's, though I've usually seen 4. Major difference is whether it provides power to the device or not. 6 does, 4 doesn't. If it doesn't, it just means the device needs it's own power supply.

USB 2.0 ports. You'll probably want an external hard drive. With audio recording it's pretty important, maybe not as much so with video, but I bet there'll be an improvement in performance. Laptop system drives tend to be small. Video requires A LOT of disk space, hence probably wanting an external. I'd recommend a USB drive because your video peripherals will probably use firewire, and you don't want to put too much on that buss.

For video you'll definitely want a large screen, at least 15". 15.4 for the widescreen, or 17 would give you most room to work around. You'll need the best graphics card you can get for video, too. At least 64mb, 128mb is better, dedicated, not shared. Unfortunately you don't get a lot of choice with this in a laptop. You almost have to choose your system around it.

Now... after saying all that... are you planning on doing this work on the road, where you'll need a laptop? If not, desktop's are still more powerful for this kind of stuff, and a bit easier to work with because of the expansion capabilities, particularly in regards to the graphics card, which is the most important part of a video workstation.

Also, if you go with a Windows based machine, learn to tweak Windows if you don't know how already. Even after a fresh install, there's so much extra crap running in the background that you can probably get a 30-50% performance increase by turning off the services you don't need.

Thanks for the advice do you know of any current lap tops on the market that satisfy these criteria

Are you looking for a Mac or PC? And what's your price range?

I need a lap top as I want to carry it to Botswana I sent a pc through the post and it arrived in several pieces. My budget could extend to 800pounds

I meant operating system. Mac OS, or Windows?

I suppose windows as I am used to using windows applications