Re: How fast a laptop for editing HDV? Anyone doing it? Toss me some spec's?

I'm using a Dell Latitude D820 with an Intel T7400 processor and 2 GB memory, plus a large 5400 RPM boot drive and some external USB2 hard drives. With this setup I can edit one layer of HDV 1080i pretty well in Edius, but performance bogs down with two or more layers. Using an intermediate editing codec like Cineform Aspect HD or Canopus HQ can make a big difference in performance, or if you're using Sony Vegas change your timeline playback settings.

Bottom line: a good dual-core laptop can handle HDV depending on what software you have and what capture codec you use. In a pinch you can downsample HDV to widescreen DV and edit that with no problems.