I can't wait to see a good answer on this. I have a Core Duo 2.0 w/ only 1GB. I want to edit with premiere and after effects....can't wait to hear the answers.
Apabari, your system should be fine, although you'll also need a beefy graphic card to preview and play the HD footage.
Isaadein, I recommend 2GB of RAM as a minimum for Premiere. As to After Effect, you can forget about doing anything more complicated than simple masking even on much more powerful system. AE handles HDV files very poorly and I've never been able to get it to work smoothly on my PC (Athlon X2 4200+, Nvidia 7600GT, 2GB RAM). If you're going to work with AE you'll need to use an intermediate codec like Cineform.
The main issue you'll encounter with editing HDV won't be so much the editing, but the render time. Saying it's horrible is an understatement. To illustrate, it took 24 hours to render about 50 minutes of footage, and this is without any color correction or complicated editing.
Many NLE's don't use the Graphics Card for editing of footage, so it doesn't really matter in that regard.
Vegas, for example, though, will benefit from a good graphics card when it comes to rendering.
But to edit, you don't need much. When you are working in programs like AE or 3d effects/compositing programs, is where your Graphics card will play a much larger role.
Yes, another post of agreeance with Ramjet. FCP lets you have RT preview via graphics card processing, again it doesnt effect render time.
The other way is to render out to DVCPro via mpeg streamclip, this will speed up those pesky render times, but it does add weight to your preview footage which will in turn require you to have a better graphics card.
But to answer apabari - yes its efficient to edit HD footage in FCP.
Alright, sounds good. I figured I should make sure my system can handle HD footage before buying an A1. From what you guys say, it sounds like I'll be fine. Thanks guys!