In editing HD video using a laptop, what are the minimum specifications needed?

What is your graphics card?

You can do it on that, but even on a 2.4 GHZ dual core the video will take a long time to render and decode when you’re done. Most video editing rigs are a little beefier than that.

@dverhey Hi thanks for the help. As for graphics card,

Chipset Model: NVIDIA GeForce 9400M
Type: Display
Bus: PCI
VRAM (Total): 256 MB
Vendor: NVIDIA (0×10de)
Device ID: 0×0863
Revision ID: 0×00b1
ROM Revision: 3437
gMux Version: 1.7.3

It takes a few hours to render and decode typical digital video with my laptop. So HD will take longer I assume?

Yes, it will. A lot longer.

A standard VGA image (640×480) or SDTV video frame is a mere 0.3 megapixels whereas a standard 720p frame (1280×720) is about 0.9MP (three times the size) and 1080p (1920×1080) is just over 2MP, or almost seven times as large. That right there means that something that takes a few hours in standard definition will take days in 1080p.

Also, your CPU isn’t nearly as fast as an i3; a mere 1,619 according to PassMark . By comparison, my $500 desktop (an i3–530) posts a 2,729 and according to this your 9400M graphics chip gets a mere 140 compared to the 333 of my Toshiba T135, the 775 of my desktop’s low-end budget card, or the blazing performance of many mid-range desktop cards in the $150 range. That doesn’t count the fact that you only have 256MB of VRAM either.

My point is that it’s technically possible to edit HD video on your current rig, bit it will be ssslllooowww. There are some things that really are best done on a desktop system, and I would skip any iMac with a Core2 Duo as even the lowest of the i-series CPUs will eat it’s lunch and the iMacs that use Core2s also use a 9400M or worse GPU. If upgrading to a newer Macbook or getting a current-gen iMac isn’t an option, you can still edit things, but prepare to leave your laptop unattended for a few days at a time while it processes.

@jerv Thank you so much. I had a feeling I would need to upgrade. Oh well, gone are the days when I had my iBook G4 and having fun editing lots of standard video using iMovie 4. Life was much simpler then. Now even this PowerBook is inadequate! : )

That’s technology for you. I used to be proud of my 3.4GHz Pentium 4 with it’s Radeon 9800XT, but that system is less powerful than the Acer Aspire One I bought a couple of years ago.