Which Field Laptop??

[C Barker]

Hi there,

I'm shooting my first project with RED Scarlet 4K soon and I'm looking to buy a laptop for either:

Dumping footage and very basic editing (which would mean upgrades to my desktop if the laptop cannot function as the primary editing tool)
or
A machine capable of taking care of pretty much everything aside from grading (or perhaps even grading if I'm feeling adventurous)

How large is the gap in capabilities between say an 8GB vs 12 GB RAM and a 1-2GB vs 3GB graphics card? What will one machine do easily that the other will struggle with? FYI I'll be editing with CS6.

Here's some examples of what I'm looking at:

1) i7, 8GB RAM, 2GB NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M 130W Graphics (eg Dell Inspiron or equivalent) - $1k
2) i7, 12GB RAM, 3GB NVIDIA GTX 670M 3GB GDDR5 Graphics (eg MSI GT60 or equivalent) - $2k

Is the more expensive option capable of serving as a full and capable editing console? Would the cheaper one even be adequate for editing the entire film with temporarily downconverted footage, and if so would this be at a recommendable resolution?

Ultimately I'm very interested to hear how far an extra $1k or so goes on a laptop when working with RED footage.

Thanks if you can help and please let me know if I can provide any more information!

 

[MichaelP]

I use this one: http://www.hp.com/united-states/campaigns/workstations/8770w_features.html#.UHspo4UWWlc

Fast, lots of connections, and Dreamcolor.

Michael

 

[Craig Lees]

I got the last of the 17" i7 MacBook pro's and put 16gb Ram and an SSD in it and it really handles the Scarlets 4K files great.

I edit in premiere, EDL to Speedgrade, grade and sharpen, 16bit 2K tiff export out of SG, chuck tiffs into fcp7, export DCP from the Doremi plugin, put DCP onto NTFS USB stick via the paragon plugin and job done. I get 2.5fps render time from SG writing to FW800 drive (though SATA/Thunderbolt drive would be better) bearing in mind each frame is 17.7MB. RAW all the way bar the end.
Get a PCMCIA sata adaptor for the red mag reader and replace your optical drive for another SSD should you need more speed. I get awesome speed as it is and am mobile.

Will a new i7 Lenovo laptop with a quadro card go faster? Maybe?!?!?

But I'm happy!

Craig Lees
Scarlet X #2525
London/New Forest
UK
cogartlit@yahoo.co.uk