Looking for a Laptop for Video Capture

[koberulz]

My Lenovo G51 seems to have carked it, at least for my purposes, so I guess I'm in the market for a replacement.

It's usually hooked up to my home theater system. Primary purpose is video capture, in HD via a BlackMagic Intensity Shuttle using the included BlackMagic Media Express, or SD via a Hauppauge USB-Live2 and AmerecTV or VirtualDub, onto a USB3.0 RAID0 drive.

In theory the RAID0 supports lossless even for HD capture, although I've never managed that, so it might be a CPU issue?

I'm capturing in SD to Lagarith AVI files, and currently in HD to MJPEG AVI files although lossless would be awesome. I tried capping HD through Vdub to a lossless codec at some point as well, but it only worked the once and dropped a ton of frames thereafter.

I'm not really sure what sort of specs I need though. It's not going to be an editing machine, purely for capture.

Does anyone have any input?

 

[Noobiness_Unlimited]

What's your budget bro?

 

[koberulz]

Given that I have no idea what I need...I don't really know. At the end of the day it needs to do what I need it to do, so there's no point setting a budget that may well be significantly lower than that.

If the G51 hadn't suddenly decided it didn't want to work anymore I wouldn't be looking into a new one, and this hasn't been something I've been planning to spend on, so the closer to zero the better. But if I don't have a capturing machine, there's no point.

 

[koberulz]

https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/support/note/9712

I found that on the BlackMagic site, listing compatibility of various laptops although the ones I Googled are long since discontinued. But it might give an idea of what sort of ballpark it needs to be in.

I looked up the receipt for the G51 and it was $AU700. If I can get what I need for somewhere in that ballpark that would be great. Under a thousand would be grand, but at the same time if I'm having to choose between a $700 machine that will knock MJPEG HD capture out of the part vs a $1000 machine that will handle lossless, I'd probably lean to the $700.

Unfortunately I'm in the middle of a project right now so I need this ASAP, so it's less a case of trying to buy to a budget and more a case of having to meet requirements, whatever that takes.

 

[koberulz]

Does anyone have any input on this?