We are about to purchase a fast gaming laptop computer with i7 quad core CPU and at least 8 gB of RAM.
We will install our copy of CS5.5, with primary application being Premiere Pro.
Being able to move the computer from place to place easily is very important to us, so we rule out a desktop or workstation.
All-in-ones are not practical for us.
We plan on spreading our Premiere functions out over 3 drives:
One SSD drive, at least 128 gB.
A pretty big 7200 rpm HDD.
And a USB 3.0 link to a fast external hard drive.
The graphics display card is quite good and the display is > 17 inches -- small by desktop standards but large for a laptop.
We don't care if it takes slightly longer to boot up, launch Premiere, or open projects.
We don't care much about render times/speeds. (We don't have a lot of effects to render as we edit or display in real time.)
We don't need RAID for protection. Given the seemingly very fast speeds of these SSD and HDDs, we don't seem to need the speed of RAID 0 (and it's not easily built into a laptop).
Our largest challenge is displaying every frame of a 30 f/s imported AVCHD file in preview/play mode (without transcoding). That's what we value.
Given our goals, can someone please help with our hard drive assignments and with some background?
We are confused about Premiere preview and scratch files. When we play the .mts clip in the source window or the timeline, are we looking at the previously-created preview file or is the source media (.mts) actually reading from a drive and processing through the CPU and/or the graphics card? Unpacking an AVCHD file for smooth display is a computing challenge if I understand correctly. If good, fast 30f/s AVCHD display is our primary goal as we edit, shouldn't we assign the preview/scratch files to the fastest storage? Isn't that the SSD drive?
And if I have enough RAM, how large does a timeline have to be before it is too large to read from 8 gB of RAM? If we install 16, will that take care of the problem?
Unless the imported .mts file is playing directly from the HDD, is there any good reason not to store the media on the USB 3.0 external drive? (There are some very good reasons to store it there.)
Thanks much,
Lance