New topic: How much computing power do you need, v/s how much electrical power do you have?

[Lasivian]

Like most things the answer to me is, "it depends".

Some things take a lot of computer power. Video editing, CAD design if you have a 3D printer, if your work needs a computer, if you like computer games, etc. (Personally I run a high end Laptop, a wired LAN and a 4-drive NAS, but I am way abnormal, lol)

However this is overkill for most users. You should determine what level of computing you *need* and size your power system accordingly.

 

[mpruet]

I’ve heard several times that you need a high-end computer for video editing. That’s not totally true. LumaFusion is an excellent video editor which runs on the iPad. It’s available from the Apple Store and is fairly inexpensive.

Here is a video that I made for an RV group heading to Alaska as a Christmas present. I captured everything on my iPad and edited it with LumaFusion.

 

[rruff]

I’ve heard several times that you need a high-end computer for video editing. That’s not totally true.

I use Avidemux which is free (Windows). Fast enough on my 8 year old 2 core i3...

 

[Lasivian]

I’ve heard several times that you need a high-end computer for video editing. That’s not totally true. LumaFusion is an excellent video editor which runs on the iPad. It’s available from the Apple Store and is fairly inexpensive.

Here is a video that I made for an RV group heading to Alaska as a Christmas present. I captured everything on my iPad and edited it with LumaFusion.

As I said, "It depends". People making their living completely from posting online videos have very different needs than people making videos for fun.

 

[user 29855]

Where can I find the power cable needed to do this???

Don't know where you can buy just the cable. Inside the Mini is a short cable that runs between the internal power supply and the motherboard. The conversion requires permanently removing the power supply, and installing a cable that runs from the motherboard to the spot where the AC connector was located. An less desireable alternative would be a longer cable that runs directly to your DC power source, such as a cigarette lighter. You can then post the power supply on ebay for sale, or keep it in case you want to convert back to 110ac operation. However, if you did want to run the Mini from AC, a regular 12 volt wall wart would do just fine. The ones I make for my friends meet their needs; whatever they want, they get.

 

[Calaverasgrande]

I'm actually working on a long term plan to get more gear 12V powered.
I figured I can rig voltage regulators and a couple capacitors in a simple circuit to give me 5v, 6v, 9v or 12v for my musical instrument devices. Things like effect pedals, drum machines, synths and reverbs.
It's more efficient to pull DC direct from the batteries than convert it to AC then use the AC/DC converters that came with them. Those will all incur a decent loss except the few that use high efficiency switching power supplies.
Honestly the loss is not that big of a deal. Sure it adds up over time, but my laptop pulls more current than 4 pedals and 2 drum machines.
I'm really saving on space. 6 power supplies takes up a bout a shoe box full of space. 6 cables with barrel connectors on both ends take up as much space as sunglasses.

 

[Calaverasgrande]

I’ve heard several times that you need a high-end computer for video editing. That’s not totally true. LumaFusion is an excellent video editor which runs on the iPad. It’s available from the Apple Store and is fairly inexpensive.

Here is a video that I made for an RV group heading to Alaska as a Christmas present. I captured everything on my iPad and edited it with LumaFusion.

I used to do computer stuff for NBC Sp[orts and Olympics.
You really only need a high powered computer for editing if you are using high bandwidth footage.
For example 4k from your phone and 4k from my pro camera are not the same. One gives you a 4k mpeg which is very compressed.
The pro camera will give me uncompressed footage. Basically 60 12 megapixels photos per second. Yeah that takes up a ton of space, and yeah a regular computer will struggle to throw that video around.
The interesting thing is that semi pro cameras like the DSLRs that shoot 4k give you medium compressed footage. It's still compressing based on color profile and doing some data compression, but not like the mobile device.
When editing we usually would make proxies. A high compression, low resolution copy of the footage. Then we edit those proxies with a normal Dell computer.
When we render the video it applies those timecode positions on the proxy footage to the full resolution footage, then outputs it in the selected framerate, bit depth and colorspace.
Where this gets complicated is when you are doing creative stuff like applying filters or color grading to footage. Or combining multiple footage on top of each other, like the famous green screen color keying effect. THAT takes computer power.
I did a doc about a panel discussion of Chinese dissidents. Because of worries about relatives still living in China/Taiwan/Hong Kong it was requested to blur the faces of everyone except a few that consented to have their faces visible.
Not exactly ILM or Pixar but it did take a 2 hour render to a 12 hour render.
And sometimes it's not even a CPU power thing. It's just about how fast the computer can move data back and forth from the disk drive.
Pro tip, get an SSD!

 

[rruff]

I'm actually working on a long term plan to get more gear 12V powered.

Easy to do... these things have been around forever and are cheap (<$20). Don't know how efficient they are though:

 

[Calaverasgrande]

Easy to do... these things have been around forever and are cheap (<$20). Don't know how efficient they are though:

those are cool, but the whole point of the way I'm doing it is to have individually regulated DC for each device, so none of my dodgy pedals are making my dodgy drum machines sound dodgy.
It will also be cheap since I'm going to get about a dozen small PCBs made and stick them around the van. That way I only need a few cable adapters.
That device looks like it's probably some kind of buck converter or switching power. That's how it outputs 12V.
Most 12V voltage regulators will eat up a couple volts so they need 14V or more.
You have to spend extra for efficient VRs.

 

[Lasivian]

those are cool, but the whole point of the way I'm doing it is to have individually regulated DC for each device, so none of my dodgy pedals are making my dodgy drum machines sound dodgy.
It will also be cheap since I'm going to get about a dozen small PCBs made and stick them around the van. That way I only need a few cable adapters.
That device looks like it's probably some kind of buck converter or switching power. That's how it outputs 12V.
Most 12V voltage regulators will eat up a couple volts so they need 14V or more.
You have to spend extra for efficient VRs.

I am doing the same thing. Using voltage regulators and custom cables to get rid of a needless DC-AC-DC conversion. So far my computer, my 3D printer, and my dehumidifier are all running fine on direct DC.

 

[WayOutWest]

With the kind of work I do with computers and creating videos, that alone would make it impossible to live in my van full time. I can't use a laptop, I need a desktop PC, and my work involves a lot of props and stage set items (eg backdrops, green screen)...suffice it to say it's just not possible to do without lots of space, more than one would have in a van or even a good sized RV.
For video editing, it depends on how intensive the video editing in terms of how much space you need. If you're just taking a few clips and put them together with titles and video transitions, that is not too intensive. But if you're doing as I do and taking hundreds of clips, adding narration, adding special effects, adding warp stabilization, adding zoom or rotation, position changes, adding green screen bits, layering 2 to 4 videos on top of each other...that is where you start needing more of a heavy duty computer setup to handle all this. Even using a robust desktop computer to do my video editing, I still have a fair number of software crashes, where the whole video editing package just suddenly freezes or folds up and disappears like a circus tent in the night.

I don't do any video editing work while traveling. While I'm on road trips I only need computer power to do a bare minimum of functions such as check emails and check a few apps. For which, my cellphone is sufficient.

 

[Calaverasgrande]

Are

With the kind of work I do with computers and creating videos, that alone would make it impossible to live in my van full time. I can't use a laptop, I need a desktop PC, and my work involves a lot of props and stage set items (eg backdrops, green screen)...suffice it to say it's just not possible to do without lots of space, more than one would have in a van or even a good sized RV.
For video editing, it depends on how intensive the video editing in terms of how much space you need. If you're just taking a few clips and put them together with titles and video transitions, that is not too intensive. But if you're doing as I do and taking hundreds of clips, adding narration, adding special effects, adding warp stabilization, adding zoom or rotation, position changes, adding green screen bits, layering 2 to 4 videos on top of each other...that is where you start needing more of a heavy duty computer setup to handle all this. Even using a robust desktop computer to do my video editing, I still have a fair number of software crashes, where the whole video editing package just suddenly freezes or folds up and disappears like a circus tent in the night.

I don't do any video editing work while traveling. While I'm on road trips I only need computer power to do a bare minimum of functions such as check emails and check a few apps. For which, my cellphone is sufficient.

You using Avid Media Composer or?
When I worked at NBC we had endless trouble with Avid. Which sucks because it's basically the only game in town for scalable distributed workflow, like you have in network news. And is about as standard as Pro Tools (another Avid product) is at recording studios.
Our in house commercial and promo team used Final Cut and After Effects and Premiere on Mac Pros and iMacs.
Never heard a peep out of them except when it was time to update plug in suites.
PCs are a better value for power per dollar, but I swear Macs are more stable. Especially running Apple software.
The newer M1 Macs are pretty decent for power. My current 14" Mac is as fast or faster than my 12 core Mac Pro. Just wish you could get these with more ram.

 

[WayOutWest]

I use Adobe Premiere Pro, and to a lesser extent Adobe Premiere Elements. What I've learned through trial and error is that I can't do more than an approximately 8-10 minute long segment of video (which alone may use over 200 or 300 different parts) before I risk the software crashing. When there's a crash I lose any unsaved work so I've gotten into the habit of saving very frequently. My videos are usually around 30 to 40 minutes long, so I try to assemble them using at least 3 to 4 different parts, often more. For instance I'll assemble one 5-6 minute segment, then export it, then do a second 5-8 minute segment, export it and so forth. Then for the whole film I just put all the separate segments together and any transitions needed, and that seems to work best. I've also learned I have to clear the media cache often and also empty the preview files out of my computer because they end up taking a lot of space.

 

[user 29855]

I'm actually working on a long term plan to get more gear 12V powered.
I figured I can rig voltage regulators and a couple capacitors in a simple circuit to give me 5v, 6v, 9v or 12v for my musical instrument devices. Things like effect pedals, drum machines, synths and reverbs.
It's more efficient to pull DC direct from the batteries than convert it to AC then use the AC/DC converters that came with them. Those will all incur a decent loss except the few that use high efficiency switching power supplies.
Honestly the loss is not that big of a deal. Sure it adds up over time, but my laptop pulls more current than 4 pedals and 2 drum machines.
I'm really saving on space. 6 power supplies takes up a bout a shoe box full of space. 6 cables with barrel connectors on both ends take up as much space as sunglasses.

I'm guessing you're thinking about linear regulators, which are not that great as far as efficiency goes. Also, stay away from those regulators that plug into a cigarette lighter socket. They are often cheaply made, and rarely meet their specifications. They are also pretty noisy, and if you have enough of them you may hear the result in your sound system. A better solution is switching regulators, and there's lots of choices. One of the best product lines comes from Pololu.com where you can find already assembled PCB's that can meet any of your voltage and/or current requirements. Adafruit.com is also a good source.

 

[machinephilosphy]

I’ve heard several times that you need a high-end computer for video editing. That’s not totally true. LumaFusion is an excellent video editor which runs on the iPad. It’s available from the Apple Store and is fairly inexpensive.

Here is a video that I made for an RV group heading to Alaska as a Christmas present. I captured everything on my iPad and edited it with LumaFusion.

Everything seems headed for phone apps. There are a bunch of very good video editors for android and iphone, which anyone can discover by just searching on youtube. I think we're going to see monitors in the form of tablet-like companions to phones via hdmi or C cables. Right now, I'm planning on just using my Mint Mobile unlimited account for internet and uploading videos, and doing video editing on my phone app, whatever app that turns out to be. So the only thing remaining is to get as efficient a UHD monitor as I can, probably something like this:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08R8D66L9The Amazon URL is just above this, but not sure if it will be clickable. Anyway, I spent hours studying the market to come up with this one, so the big power issue is going to be how much big-screen time I need to power in addition to heat and cooking.

 

[Lasivian]

Everything seems headed for phone apps. There are a bunch of very good video editors for android and iphone, which anyone can discover by just searching on youtube. I think we're going to see monitors in the form of tablet-like companions to phones via hdmi or C cables. Right now, I'm planning on just using my Mint Mobile unlimited account for internet and uploading videos, and doing video editing on my phone app, whatever app that turns out to be. So the only thing remaining is to get as efficient a UHD monitor as I can, probably something like this:
View attachment 30120
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08R8D66L9The Amazon URL is just above this, but not sure if it will be clickable. Anyway, I spent hours studying the market to come up with this one, so the big power issue is going to be how much big-screen time I need to power in addition to heat and cooking.

Most people will not need more than a phone for doing basic videos. But as an example if you follow a lot of YouTube channels you will find that as people post better videos the hardware they use to make them gets more expensive and powerful.

Having a larger screen does not put more power "under the hood" to handle the heavy lifting that editing professional video requires. For example I shoot 4k video with a Panasonic Lumix DSLR, and I end up with raw video files that are 318GB per hour of footage. There is no phone that can handle this.

 

[Calaverasgrande]

To the original question my power set up is 3000 watts. As I was anticipating finding space in here for my Mac Pro, and all of it's peripherals.
That includes 2 DSP boxes, 2 RAID disk boxes, 2 audio interface rackmounts w/an expansion AD and a 4k Dell UltraSharp.
I'm probably going to revise that to one RAID one DSP and one audio interface with the same 4k Dell and run all that off of my 14" Macbook Pro.
Considering getting a dock to make it easier to hook it all up.
I'm not near my storage unit so I can't give precise figures. But last time I checked my whole studio setup was just under 15 amps.
But that also included a 24 channel analogue mixer, several studio audio units and 2 sets of speakers.
My guesstimate is that without all the analogue gear I'm closer to 10 amps. And cutting that roughly in half and going with the more efficient laptop gets me down to 5-7 amps, 600-840 watts.

 

[Spaceman Spiff]

I think we're going to see monitors in the form of tablet-like companions to phones via hdmi or C cables . . . So the only thing remaining is to get as efficient a UHD monitor as I can, probably something like this:
. . .

Is anyone doing this?

My question is: 'how much draw is on the cell phone battery?' I can get a lightning to HDMI cable but what about power to the phone or how long can I use the phone as the processor before having to recharge.

I would like to use my phone with a larger monitor via HDMI and a bluetooth keyboard.

 

[machinephilosphy]

Is anyone doing this?

My question is: 'how much draw is on the cell phone battery?' I can get a lightning to HDMI cable but what about power to the phone or how long can I use the phone as the processor before having to recharge.

I would like to use my phone with a larger monitor via HDMI and a bluetooth keyboard.

Both the tablet and phone will be 5v each, if you get a regular or even portable monitor, that's 110v, 30-60 watts, not sure how many amps, but the tablet is the way to go for me because its energy is close to a phone. So the only remaining question for me now is to mirror the phone onto the tablet (which I will check out on the internet now).

 

[Calaverasgrande]

Ohms law.
Volts times Amperes is Watts.
Inverse, Watts divided by volts is Amps
.54 amps.