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Vegas will not take advantage of the things in a production laptop (or desktop) that Avid can. I see the same things as Bill.

I haven't played with vegas9, 64 bit very much. Review of other posters expereinces with Vegas9 64 bit seem to be somewhat negative. Currently, Media Composer 4.05 is not supported by Avid on a 64 bit system, however, it's working very well for me.

Bill you're a rebel. And as you know I ran my Avid MC 4.0.4 test on Win7 64bit. I was absolutely FLOORED by the speed. Especially compared to VP9.0c running on the same machine.

I don't necessarily have "negative" opinion of VP9.0, I just find it's got some issues that need addressing. And the changes I'd like to see need to happen at a ground-up level, and not a "bug fix" level.

I've sat with guys editing 2K on an MacBook Pro with no stutter.

Today, only the 17" MBP has an Express Card slot (for high performance eSATA and more) and a 1920x1080 screen.

I use a $175 (B&H) FirmTek 2EN2 enclosure with a SeriTek/2SM2-E Express Card. You can get 200 MB/sec with fast 1 TB drives, and it works on both the Mac side and the Windows side. Compact and robust both, fan with selectable L/M/H speeds.

ProRes rocks, especially now with the 4444 versions for compositing, but CineForm should be a good choice for two-way compatibility Mac-Win with small file sizes.

(If you have the disk space, don't forget the inexpensive Sheer codecs which can be less lossy than lossless* and solve other problems.)

(*extinguish your flame, please :O): Sheer does a better job of YUV<>RGB conversion than most other tools, this can reduce conversion errors.)

Not sure what you mean, Perrone. I call it like I see it....no candy coating.The caveat, for anything on the internet, is that it's just my opinion...and that's all it is....like everyone else in here.
When I first started in this biz, I spent a great deal of time reading posts in these forums. As my experience grew, I found out that there is a LOT of misinformation being broadcast. I would, sincerely, hope i don't promulgate too much misinformation. It seems like there are always noobies trying to learn. There are also geezers, stuck in their ways who accept only one way of doing something. In this age of rapidly evolving technologies, anyone who gets stuck in a fixed workflow will ultimately fall behind.

You lost me.

I called you a rebel for running Avid on a non-supported config. I was merely saying that I did the same and was similarly impressed. I wasn't disagreeing at all. In fact, I was saying that we both were running outside the lines and having success with it.

Guess that didn't translate. Sorry.

ahhh...ok, NP...thanx...I misunderstood you

.

Do you use RAM renders?

What things in a production laptop?

Well, my Nvidia Quadro card for one...

No such thing as RAM renders in Avid MC. You import files, and Avid puts them into an intermediate format, namely DNxHD, with a bitrate that matches the acquired video. You edit the intermediate, then output it to a video format of your choice. Mostly, I output to the equivalent of a frameserver. Then, use the frameserver output in a variety of different third party applications, depending on customer needs. Cineform for preview or storage, MPEG-Streamclip for H264, MPEG2 for DVD distribution, etc.Regardless, the timeline preview in Avid is stutter free and renderless. Some effects have to be rendered to view realtime. I suppose, this is equivalent to RAM preview.

Bill, out of curiosity, what effects do you have to render? Of all the stuff I tried, the only thing I had to render was motion tracking. Everything else was real-time for me.

If you really want a pain free laptop editing experience I'd suggest the Dell XPS 16. http://www.dell.com/us/en/home/performance-deals/fs.aspx?refid=performance-deals&s=dhs&cs=19

16" screen and about 6 lbs. Light enough to travel with but packs a serious punch with an i7 processor! Full on 4 physical cores plus 4 logical cores. Battery life won't be great if you're hammering it but that is just how it is with this kind of portable processing power... even with 32nm latest cpu technology/process.

That being said if there is a plug nearby you'll have near high end desktop power in that tiny package.

If you want to step down to something smaller I'd suggest something like the Studio 14 with the new Core i3. Also a 32nm process chip. 2 physical cores plus 2 logical cores (hyperthreaded as above). Still will give you very good performance with a lighter more battery efficient package.

I personally *only* consider the newer i3 or i7 mobile chips produced with the new 32nm process. They use less electricity and produce less heat for equivalent performance of the older 45nm process. Both very important with laptops.

The i3 mobile variant actually provides quite good performance, often times beating the old Q6600 (true quad core with no hyperthreading) while using MUCH less juice.

- Mark