It came time to buy a laptop for some of my other ventures, GPS moving map, some ham radio work, etc.  I found a nice Gateway (yawn) at Best Buy...15" screen, Intel core duo 2.0 Ghz, 1 gig ram, 160 gig hard drive, Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950 with up to 224 MB of Shared Video Memory (woohoo), 5.5 lbs., built in wireless, 4 USB ports, 1 Firewire, DVD RW, etc., and the installed OS is Vista Home Premium.

After getting all my other programs setup and running, I decided to try Liquid on the machine...I read Tomas' blurb on setting up Liquid on Vista...the installation went just fine.  I then gave it some video to work on (still only the C drive to work with, no second drive) - the thing works great!  No problems, yet, with the video, maybe when I get to working it hard it may hiccup, but not yet and now I can take Liquid with me!

Oh, yeah...the laptop was expensive...$499.99 !  Hehehe!

Tim

That's interesting that even with shared video memory, it works with Liquid. Perhaps a graphics subsystm has fewer restrictions under Vista? Let us know how it goes as you put in a few more hours of editing on that 'expensive' platform

salexander:

That's interesting that even with shared video memory, it works with Liquid. Perhaps a graphics subsystm has fewer restrictions under Vista? Let us know how it goes as you put in a few more hours of editing on that 'expensive' platform

The chipset in the laptop prolly doesn't hurt either. The primary reason shared memory has had problems is because of memory bandwidth. The Core 2 duo on the other hand is a very efficient user of memory bandwidth with it's optimized cache internal to the processor, leaving more for the shared memory GPU. But I wouldn't expect miracles performance wise.

Very promising Tim. Keep us posted when you try some real editing on it. If we have a reliable $500 laptop to recommend that would be great.

Just a month ago I bought a Dell Vostro with an Intel Core 2 Duo 1.6 gig, 1 gig ram, and a NVidia GForce 8600GT with 256 megs of dedicated video ram.  Unfortunately, it came with Vista Home Basic (I bought a reconditioned with full warranty from Dell).  I installed Liquid 7.2 as Tim did and it appears to work great, so far.  The laptop cost me $589 (not too bad) and I purchased a Seagate 250 gig USB2 HD for $69 a BestBuy.  So far, for SD editing things are going well.  It allows me to go to my clients rather than them having to always come to me for editing.

bertran:

Just a month ago I bought a Dell Vostro with an Intel Core 2 Duo 1.6 gig, 1 gig ram, and a NVidia GForce 8600GT with 256 megs of dedicated video ram.  So far, for SD editing things are going well.  It allows me to go to my clients rather than them having to always come to me for editing.

So you are saying that your are editing with a Nvidia 8600 GPU. Are you using any GPU effects cause everyone was saying the 8XXX series from Nvidia doesn't work. 

To be honest, I just started editing with the laptop and haven't even focused on whether I've been using CPU or GPU RT effects.  I'll check it out and get back to you, but so far, I've seen no problems with effects.

bertran:

To be honest, I just started editing with the laptop and haven't even focused on whether I've been using CPU or GPU RT effects.  I'll check it out and get back to you, but so far, I've seen no problems with effects.

How soon are you able to test this, a lot of users want to know I guess?

I'll be working on this project in the next two or three days and will be able to at least give you a report on GPU effects on a single layer of video.  It's a wedding I shot for a friend in which I'm just doing simple edits.

I've spent about an hour on this wedding video using exclusively RT GPU effects and everything has been fine, as far as the RT effects on the computer screen is concerned.  I just rendered the RT effects and noticed in the render window horizontal green lines.  Is that what everyone's talking about with the NVidia 8600 series? 

I just watched the output on an NTSC monitor via firewire and the GPU effects are exhibiting this green line render issue.  I replaced the GPU dissolve with the CPU and the problem dissappeared.

I was fooled in thinking there was no problem when everything looked great on the computer display.  Sorry for the false hope.  Hopefully future drivers will solve the problem.  Is it safe to assume that's I'll get these GPU FX problems if I create a DVD off the timeline?

Ross

This issue will be fixed in a future patch. They need to rewrite the 3D rendering engine in Liquid. That will take some time.

Lew,

 Thanks for the encouraging news.  So far, (despite having to have the DVD drive, power supply and touch pad replaced under warranty) I really like the Vostro.  For the price, it is a really fast laptop and so far, Liquid has performed well under Vista 32, except for the NVidia issue.  Of course, I haven't done multiple video layers or tried to burn a DVD yet.  I'll post my results.  As I mentioned in a previous Avid post, I bought this as an infrequent editing backup to my XP dual Xeon workstation. and to allow me to do simple editing with clients at their office.

Ross

I tried to create a DVD in Liquid using my Vostro laptop running Vista Home Basic and Liquid kept crashing.  I decided I needed to either create a dual boot with XP and Vista or do a fresh XP install over the existing system.  I was able, through the help of a couple of websites and a utility, to create a dual boot system that's working well.  Now I have AL 7.2 where it wants to be back in XP Land and now just have to wait until the problem with the nVidia 8600 video is resolved.