is my laptop too slow for magic bullet?

whenever i use the magic bullet's misfire plug-in and i try to render, premiere pro freezes up, then closes. is my laptop too slow? (specs are below)
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comp: toshiba laptop, p4 2.8ghz, 512mb, 80gb hard drive, 17" screen, 80gb external hd
cam: sony dcr-trv8 w/ sony spk-dvf5
software: premiere pro, after effects, flash mx

yes....laptops just aren't mage for rendering

do you have mozilla?

rich, even with a 2.8ghz processor?

it seriously sounds like you dont have enough ram. rendering is a ram-whore. i dont know about premiere, but alot of NLE programs call for atleast 1 gig of ram minimum.

does your computer have(support) hyper-threading?

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quote:

does your computer have(support) hyper-threading?

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yes.

my friend has an alienware like note book like mine running Vegas and it would look up during intense rendering sessions. the tech at sony told him to disable hyperthreading and it got rid of his problems. that could be a potential fix.

also, my notebook (running Avid Xpress pro) will lock up it i have less than 11 gigs of space left.

http://www.lafcpug.org/tutorials/basic_magic_bullet.html

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quote:

also, my notebook (running Avid Xpress pro) will lock up it i have less than 11 gigs of space left.

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i've got 51gb left in the laptop drive, and 30gb on my external.

thanks for the help.

Also, look into the transfer rate between the HD and board.....Ram speed etc.

Your laptop has 4200RPM HD's, you may have a fast processor but the infrstuture of the computer sucks. Also, transfering to a external drive is even slower.

Just a thought.

(Message edited by rson on December 20, 2004)

Transfering to an external hard drive is not slower than a 4200 rpm HD. Not by far.

Jeremy,

The Toshiba 4300 rpm laptop drives have an 800 Mbps transfer rate.

USB2 is 480 Mbps.
Firewire is 400 Mbps.

Joe,

Computers should never actually freeze because they are too slow (they should just run slower). If it's not actually freezing but slowing to a crawl, memory may be an issue. Since it sounds like the whole program is actually crashing, there's probably a program error in the plug-in (like a deadlock or race condition). I'd try turning off the hyperthreading, as toolfan has suggested. You might also want to check for updates to Premiere and the plug-in. They may have fixed the issue.

NO. The transfer rate of the cable connecting the Hard drive to the motherboard makes no difference. Neither Hard drive can output faster than either cable. So the theoretical transfer rate of an IDE cable (which is how his internal drive is hooked up) and USB or Firewire doesn't matter. In that case the fastest HD would win.
I forgot the smiley face.

(Message edited by shutupandboard on December 21, 2004)

I don't know, man. Toshiba says that the drives transfer at 100 MB/s so I thinking the IDE interface is the bottleneck. If that's the case, either external interface would be an even greater bottleneck.

On a side note, the greater the data density, the higher the transfer rate will be at a given rpm. If I am right about the IDE interface being the bottleneck, then increasing the speed of these laptop hard drives will only bring your seek time down a bit. In other words, 4200 rpm might not be so bad for a modern laptop drive. It's almost certainly faster than a 5200 rpm desktop drive from a few years ago.

Actually the IDE interface is definitely not the bottle neck. If that were the case than the Western Digital Raptor 10,000 RPM hard drives wouldn't be any faster. But they are. I have one and have noticed the difference. It's commonly known that hard drives are the bottle neck.

You should check out http://www.sharkyforums.com/ You would probably really like it. There's TONS of info on there. It's the WakeWorld of computers!

Here's a couple of threads on Sharkys that are about transfer rates and hard drives.
http://www.sharkyforums.com/showthread.php?s=c10fc91a1b5f144071bfc6f2d1965b4a& threadid=240908&highlight=transfer+rate

http://www.sharkyforums.com/showthread.php?s=c10fc91a1b5f144071bfc6f2d1965b4a& threadid=236783&highlight=transfer+rate

"It may "appear" as if SATA is faster than IDE ATA looking at specs, seeing as ATA caps out at 133MB/s as opposed to SATA's 150MB/s. These numbers are, for the most part, irrelevant unless working in RAID arrays. Even the fastest HDDs on the market today struggle to reach transfer speeds of 75MB/s. Even the Western Digital 10,000 RPM SATA Raptor can only reach read/write speeds of about 65MB/s."

I actually know how all this stuff works (down to the atomic level even). I just don't really keep up-to-date on the current numbers. I was quoting Toshiba's specs which now appear to be misleading( perhaps their stated transfer rates are only from the cache). I searched around more and found some independent data that backs up your statements. It looks like there are actually no drives out there that are are limited even by the ATA-100 interface.

You're wrong about me liking those forums though. A bunch of geeks passionately arguing about motherboards and stuff? No, thanks! I hate computer technology; I just create it for a living... Reading benchmark numbers is like watching paint dry.

The actual number I found for for a Toshiba 4200rpm drive was 230 Mbps read transfer rate so that's not even up to the capabilities of ATA-33. OK, Joe. Your hard drive sucks. It still shouldn't crash your plug-in though.

The thing is. When you paint something say...red. When it starts out it's pretty dark. More of a maroon color. As it dries some spots dry faster and slowly turn red, while other spots stay darker for a longer period of time. SO, it's not really fair to compare benchmarking to such an exciting activity such as watching paint dry.