System Requirements for Editing AVCHD on PC?

A

AdrenalineSleep

Member
I've been strongly considering the purchase of the HMC150. I downloaded some native AVCHD footage and I can view it just fine with Windows Media Player Classic. I have Premiere Pro CS4 and I after the computer has finished updating the playback is fine UNTIL it gets to a transition of any kind and then the video just freezes.

The audio continues to play and premiere is still going through the timeline at a regular pace. Looks like handling 2 video streams at once is too much. So my system specs are as follows.


Intel Core 2 Quad Processor:
Q8200 (2.33GHz, 1333MHz FSB), w/ 4MBcache
Graphics Card:
ATI RADEON HD 4670 512MB
Memory:
6GB DDR2 SDRAM at 800MHz - 2X2GB+2X1GB
Hard Drive:
640GB Serial ATA 2 Hard Drive 7200RPM

Note: I have a second hard drive in my system 1.5TB SATA Serial ATA 2 Hard Drive 7200RPM. the 640 is my boot drive and not even close to half full, is it fine to work on that?


I can't upgrade my computer and buy this camera at the same time so I am curious to know
Is it my system? If so, is there any hope of getting this thing to edit AVCHD?
Or is it just Premiere? (I've read people having problems with premiere and native AVCHD)

P.S.- Is it me or is Adobe Media Encoder really kind of worthless?
 
Don't edit AVCHD! Just don't! It was never designed to be edited.

If you're using Premiere, get the Cineform codec and keep your current computer.

I'm using GV/Canopus Edius and use its conversion utility. It is a little time consuming but the resulting performance boost is worth it.
 
why not edit AVCHD if it works? i think it might be premiere thats bothering adrenalinesleep not the avchd format.

im using vegas 9, and ive played around with the highest quality native AVCHD(24mbps 1080p from NXCAM) and it works smooth on my Dell precision M4300 laptop, (duo core T9300 2,5GHz, 4gigs of ram and 7200rpm hard drive). so your quadcore should have no problem with it.

one thing i dont understand is i can edit the AVCHD with just minor skips in transitions,(when viewing) but not the 1080p footage from the Canon 7D, well I can, but it is not as smooth as the AVCHD, although my CPU is on 95% usage while working with the AVCHD but only 75% working with the 7D footage.

Is it just my computer or is the 1080p footage from the Canon 7D more power-consuming then AVCHD 1080p?
 
::update::

::update::

I pulled the trigger on the HMC in late May and have been working with it ever since. Ever since Premiere updated to 4.1 editing AVCHD works just fine. (Now, I've been having a few issues exporting to SD but that's another topic for another day. AME works well for the most part but it can be the bane of my existence at times.) I have to render transitions and effects to get smooth playback but my computer jams along nicely editing AVCHD straight from the MTS files.

Also, I updated to Windows 7 HP 64-bit. Making the leap to 64-bit lets me use all 6GB of RAM.

Now if you'll excuse me, I am exporting my latest project as I type... :happy:
 
Interestingly some folks have absolutely no problem editing avchd without transcoding - Most of the Edius NEO 2.5 (boosters) are happy campers whereas me - a Vegas 9 PRO are getting so so results - despite win 7 64 on octocore 3 ghz, 12 GB ram! but some guys with almost excat same system can edit Vegas with multiple tracks and transisitions like a breeze.

After having tampered with settings in Vegas things are getting better so my conclusion is: Just as you would tweak around with your HMC's file settings rather than just shoot default right out of the box, the same must be done with your NLE. After you have met some minimum requirements to hardware.....it comes down to settings and tweaks mostly on your NLE but also operating system. For instance Just defragging my hardisc speeded up my Vegas editing, as did NLE preview settings.

....off to the vegas forum soliciting settigns....
 
Thanks.

Still I wish there was a solid cross platform, non download what codec you have to have, way to share HD files for further editing.
 
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