Video Editing Laptops
Thanks to new high performance chipsets, one thing that is possible on a laptop that never used to be before is editing video. These days, many professional and amateur video editors are using their laptops to manipulate digital video just like on stand-alone systems that cost $30,000 or more.

The best laptops for video editing should contain a fast processor and a lot of memory, unless the user wants to wait around at each step of the game while things load, process and save. I recommend at least a dual core processor, which can be made by either AMD or Intel, and two or four gigabytes of RAM. If you want to be working with very large files, this is important because in order for the CPU to process any information it must be loaded into memory first. And since loading information into and out of memory is a very time intensive process, the more data that can be loaded at one time, the better.

The graphics hardware on video and photo editing laptops doesn’t have to be top of the line, as you won’t be doing any 3D rendering while you’re editing video like you would be when playing an advanced game. But the laptop should have a fair amount of video memory, for the same reason a lot of RAM is needed on the motherboard.

The last piece of hardware you need is some way of getting the video from your camera to the computer. While this can be done via USB, or even media such as a CFC or Memory Stick, very large files are best transferred via a Firewire connection, which is a very fast link between the two devices.

As for the software, there are different levels of complexity depending on how much you want to spend. A company called Avid makes professional broadcast quality video editing software for around $1700, and Adobe has their Premiere suite for less than $600. But many Apple computers contain free video editing software bundled in. This solution is not as nice as the professional suites, but it is more than adequate for the amateur video editor.