UKC

Hi folks,

I've been editing wee climbing videos for a while now and would really like to take things to the next level. I'm heading off to Font soon and plan to get lots of nice footage with my camera and my mates very sexy DSLR which shoots excellent video.

I've been using Windows live movie maker but feel I have exhausted all it's capabilities! Was looking at various bits of software like Sony's platinum video editor 11 but not sure if my laptop's up the job (Sony says I should have 512GBU graphics card but I've only got 128...) Not being a computer expert, would it just crash all the time or would it be workable but slow?

Without forking out for an expensive desktop PC is there any way I can do this with my laptop? External graphics card maybe?

Thanks.

(hope it's ok to ask in this forum, I thought about using the Photo forum but thought this was more of a computer question!)

In reply to Beardyman:

not a direct answer to your question, but....

i run adobe premier pro on a laptop with built in intel HD graphics
where it "struggles" (ie takes abit longer) is previewing and then rendering the output compared to having a proper video card. but the program actually works fine. i haven't used vegas (but it's highly rated on the gopro forum for example)

so is your computer up to the job? easy way to find out is, is there a trial available of the software you could install?

would need more info on the spec of your laptop to know any more.

In reply to Beardyman: Adobe and Vegas both have trial versions, however you may have to search around a bit for older downloads as the versions on the main site only run with windows 7.
I'm currently using AVS editor but I suspect that if you are looking to upgrade from Windows live then it too may be a bit basic.

In reply to Beardyman: Thanks.

I am running windows 7, 4GB RAM, 2.1GHz processor.

I'll try the trial version and see if that works...

In reply to Beardyman:


don't "just" give the trial versions a go. there are loads of great video tutorials on the recomended way to use them too (ie a suggested workflow)

my PP skills leapt forward dramatically when i started using the guidance on creativecow.net and video copilot

also vimeo have an excellent mini series on using a dslr for videoing that's worth a look