Travel Setup for Video Editing

Laptop, tablet or something else?

I'm heading to the Philippines for a week in the spring so I have time to learn. We will, well I will, be doing daily videos of our events and workshops so I will have to edit the dailies and then upload them for stateside use. I will have more time once home to make better edits.

I don't have anything portable. Right now I've got my 5DM4 and suitable lenses for the video but no laptop or tablet, etc to edit on. I'll also prolly get a hot shoe microphone and maybe build a handheld rig but that's not my biggest concern.

goalerjones wrote in post #18940173
Laptop, tablet or something else?

I'm heading to the Philippines for a week in the spring so I have time to learn. We will, well I will, be doing daily videos of our events and workshops so I will have to edit the dailies and then upload them for stateside use. I will have more time once home to make better edits.

I don't have anything portable. Right now I've got my 5DM4 and suitable lenses for the video but no laptop or tablet, etc to edit on. I'll also prolly get a hot shoe microphone and maybe build a handheld rig but that's not my biggest concern.

Are you planning to shoot in 4k? If so, powerful laptop will be needed to digest massive mjpeg files whether they go onto a timeline or transcoded. I’ve shot countless hours of 4k footage with 5div over the last two years so have lots of experience editing its footage.

If it’s just 1080p then ipad is best, I use iphone 8 plus for editing (1080p screen). You’d need Apple camera connection kit to transfer 1080p files onto iphone or ipad. I highly recommend LumaFusion app for lossless video editing and encoding in H265, half the file size for easier upload online.

I hadn't decided on 4k or 1080p yet. Also I'm an Android user Samsung S10, so I'm sure there's a connection setup there too.

So you use the iPad for storage and the phone for actual editing?

goalerjones wrote in post #18940276
I hadn't decided on 4k or 1080p yet. Also I'm an Android user Samsung S10, so I'm sure there's a connection setup there too.

So you use the iPad for storage and the phone for actual editing?

no, I don’t use ipad for anything. I edit on iPhone 8 plus and much prefer it that way, I can do editing on the fly anywhere. Data is stored on SD card and then transferred to hdd after traveling. Again, in case of 4k from 5div it is not practical but with my new m6 mark ii, its 4k files are much smaller and compatible with iPhone so I’ve been editing those in Luma Fusion and iMovie with ease. Anything 5div related, I edit only on home desktop PC with Nvidia card for hardware acceleration (CUDA cores for Premiere).

Anyway, your most important decision is 4k or 1080p. I usually always end up with a mixture of both due to field of view or frame rate selection but eventually output to 4k. E.g., slow mo is not even available in 4.

“Time to learn” meaning you’ve not yet done much video editing?

I edit on iPhone, on iPad pro, on Macbook pro 15”, and on mac desktop 27”. Not much 4k.

iPhone/iPad always seem like a significant compromise, but sometimes I have to do it. Anything beyond trimming heads and tails and basic assembly always seems harder than it should be. This is in iMovie, which actually works pretty well, but it’s limited. For example, you can do a title in any of a few different styles, but you don’t really have the ability to create the style you want.

Most of my editing is done in Premiere on a 15” macbook. This works pretty well. I do some work on a 27”, which is handy when I need to have something else open like a script or shotlist.

I’d recommend trying some. Most mac/pc software has trial versions. Most iOS/Android apps are cheap. I’d find software I like, then think about the hardware that supports it, rather than starting with the question tablet/laptop/desktop.