Camera
There are alot of different camera’s for making video or photo to edit. Most camera’s now have Full HD (1920 x 1080).
Most known types are SLR camera’s (lens can be changed). The quality of the video is mostly not so good as for example bridge camera’s. Bridge camera’s are very good ( i have the Panasonic FZ1000) in video and photo.
If you want pictures only, then the SLR camera’s are the best.
But if you want it all then a bridge camera is very good, because it has a lens for zooming in. Some people like that option alot
Smartphone
Lots of people choose to use a smartphone for their footage and i
must say that the quality is amazing good.
The only thing that mostly missing is the zoom, this is digital and zooming in
creates pixels ( blocks ) and nobody wants that.
The smartphone media quality improves every time and i think that can become the future of shooting video.
You never bring your camera to every occasion, but the phone is.
Thats why it becomes so popular.
Hardware Tip !
The specs of a camera
Most camera’s, Smartphones or Drones have minimal 1920 x 1080 resolution or higher. So called Full HD.
Whatever camera your using, Full HD is more then enough to create beautiful photo’s and video’s. And your computer specs can be lower to edit Full HD. It needs less power then 4k ( 3840 x 2160 ) for example. That also saves money as well.
If you like slow motion for example, then you pay attention to the framerate of a camera.
The higher the framerate or FPS ( frames per second ) the better the slow motion effect will be in your exported video. I always use a minimum of 50 FPS for video.
Drone Video’s
Drones are real popular and i own a DJI Mavic Air myself. It takes stunning photo’s and video’s and is always stabilized. So, no shaky footage.
Alot of drones have minium Full HD camera’s and that is fine.
Higher quality ( 4K) is better, but will consume more power from you computersystem.
When you want to make video of nature or see the world from another view, the drone is a wonderfull add on to your gear
Action Cam
Most known Action cam is of course the Go Pro series and they are very good camera’s to capture every action you take.
Racing, cycling, running and more will be lots of fun to use a Action Cam.
I you want to test it cheap, you can start with a Denver Action Cam for example.
Is about 40-60 dollar, so not very expensive.
I have a Denver Action Cam myself and i mostly use it for fishing.
PC or Laptop ?
Most people will use a PC for editing work, but the laptop has become also a wanted piece of hardware to use for editing.
Keep in mind that a laptop will always be slower then a PC.
The power consumption of a laptop is less then a PC.
A Laptop has so called mobile parts who are not as fast as the normal ones.
An Intel i7 6700 in a pc is faster then the same processor in a laptop.
Another thing can be that a PC for editing is cheaper than a laptop.
If i should now buy a laptop for myself, i would cost me a 1000 dollars more then a PC.
2800 Dollars for a Laptop and 1800 Dollars for a PC.
Minimum Requirements for editing
The needed hardware depends on what kind of videoquality you record your footage.
I would say that the minimum is 1920 x 1080 (Full HD)
A couple of things really matter, they are :
Harddisk : Seperate the Windows partition and the Editing partition.
note: Windows is the C: Partition, be sure to ask for a D: Partition.
This will safe alot of time making or creating your video.
Updates : Keep all your hardware and Windows up to date at all times.
This really can help to prevent problems with crashing and so.
Keep the drivers of your system up to date also.
See the full requirements for editing below :
Desktop PC
- Intel Pentium i5 or higher
- 6 GB RAM Internal Memory
- Cardreader ( To copy the media from the memorycard ( SD ) to your PC.
- 500 GB harddisk ( I prefer 2 partitions, 1 for Windows an one for your footage). 2 seperate harddisks is even better
- Graphics card ( Onboard is possible but is slow and has no support for Cuda for example ) A GPU processor is better and faster if you use effects in the video
- Onboard Sound
Notes about he harddisk :
A regular harddisk is fine and you get alot of storage. But better is that you use a SSD ( Solid State Drive ) Tip : 256GB for Windows and a bigger one for editing.
The SSD disk is about 4 times faster then a regular harddisk.
If you want speed , but you don’t have big money, you can use a SSD for Windows and a regular harddisk for your footage and more.
Notebook
- Intel Pentium i5 or higher
- 6 GB RAM Internal Memory
- Cardreader ( To copy the media from the memorycard ( SD ) to your PC.
- 500 GB harddisk ( I prefer 2 partitions, 1 for Windows an one for your footage). 2 harddidks is even better
- Graphics card ( Onboard is possible but is slow and has no support for Cuda for example ) A GPU processor is better and faster if you use effects in the video
- Onboard Sound
A notebook can also be suited with a SSD Disk, and also makes it alot faster
Notebooks have a so called M2 slots these days and those are ment for the harddisk . They look alot like internal RAM memory.
It happens alot these days that Notebooks don’t have a DVD Reader or Writer anymore.
If you do not want to burn your video to a DVD, then it is OK.
If you do need a burner then you can buy a external one.
Very important TIP :
Many cheap laptops have so called Hybrid SSD disks , This is not the same as a SSD or a M2 slot SSD.
A hybrid disk has a smal storage for Windows and that part uses the SSD part. But the rest of the disks is a normal mechanical disk.
And those are very often 4500 rpm, that is way to slow for editing.
Conclusion is that i do not recommend a Hybrid disk, way to slow !
If you need big storage and you decide to get a normal mechanical disk then get a 5400 or higher rpm disk.