Win/PC users: CPU, RAM, GPU for AVCHD editing?

Kevin I

Kevin I

Active member
For the PC users, would you mind sharing your computer specs for AVCHD editing and let us know if it handles AVCHD smoothly or not?

My system was okay for HDV but handles 1080i60 slugglishly... and trying to edit 720p60 grinds it to a halt.

Current specs:
2.2GHz Core 2 Duo
4GB DDR2 800 RAM (3GB usable)
onboard graphics - NVIDIA GeForce 7100/nForce 630i
Windows XP Pro SP3
Premiere CS4
Video is on an external USB 2 320GB hard disk.


I'm wondering if upgrading the CPU to a 2.5GHz Core2 Quad and/or getting a separate video card will make much of a difference...

Thanks.
 
2.4GHz Core 2 Duo laptop
2GB RAM
NVidia NVS 140M discrete graphics
WinXP SP3
Premiere CS4 version 4.1 (the "4.1" update is *vital* for AVCHD work)

Edits and plays all 720p modes, full-screen, realtime. 1080/24p and 1080/60i aren't 100% realtime but are close.
 
2.4 core duo laptop
6gb ram
512mb nVidia discrete
vista 64 bit
sony vegas 9

i'm rendering a video right now, while streaming sirius (gotta have my stern, gotta) msn messenger running, and i've got a few web pages open (facebook, youtube, dvxuser), vegas isn't running any slower, and while i multitask i haven't had any crashes (pc's have come a looong way). i can't play the raw AVCHD files with VLC, it's just a black screen with audio, but the footage plays smoothly in vegas (motion jpeg plays fine with vlc). i made the mistake of trying to stream the video off the panasonic class 6 card at first and it played back very choppy (of course) so perhaps if you move the files you want to work on directly onto your computers hard drive they might work smoother for you, if you haven't already tried that.
 
Barry_Green said:
Premiere CS4 version 4.1 (the "4.1" update is *vital* for AVCHD work)
Click to expand...

Barry,

THANK YOU!

I wasn't aware of the 4.1 update, but I just installed it and it's a HUGE improvement! I can actually do some work on these 720p60 files now. :cheesy:

-Kevin
 
I've been looking into optimizing my system for optimal AVCHD (and H264 in general) performance. As far as Premiere goes, the 4.1 update utilizes GPU acceleration and just makes it a breeze to edit with. As far as processor specs go, the Q6600 is dirt cheap now (and always has been), if you want a quad core setup running. The cores don't seem to impact Premiere on a grand scale, and indeed I find its multithreading to be minimal in improvement. I'm working with a Geforce 8800GT 512MB here, which is a bit old by now, but it has full hardware H264 support, and Premiere seems happy with it.

One other area you may consider is general playback. Windows 7 (which I'm currently running) has native H264 decoding, presumably on a software basis, and it seems to run 1080p just fine for playback through WMP. ffdshow, a popular decoder package that I'm sure many of us know of, might be somewhat faster, and multithreaded builds exist. The fastest AVC decoding by far is with CoreAVC, however; its software speed outclasses ffdshow (I typically run 20-30% CPU on 1080p), but like Premiere, it can also utilize GPU acceleration (CUDA decoding, which is only on Nvidia cards), which brings my CPU usage to a mere 8-12%. CoreAVC is not free, but it also not expensive... it's $15, so it's well worth it if you ask me. If you do additional directshow based work, you could theoretically use the GPU decoding of CoreAVC as a fast input.

Enjoy!
 
Barry_Green said:
Yeah, 4.1 changes everything, it's a massive improvement. Glad it's working out for you!
Click to expand...

I've got a question: When you playback AVCHD footage in 4.1, does the video repeatedly shift down and to the right slightly, then pop back (up and to the left) constantly every second?

At least my system will play the AVCHD footage now, but it feels like I'm watching a TV with the "vhold" setting out of adjustment. It would be great if there is a fix for this too. :)


RX782 said:
the 4.1 update utilizes GPU acceleration and just makes it a breeze to edit with. As far as processor specs go, the Q6600 is dirt cheap now (and always has been), if you want a quad core setup running. The cores don't seem to impact Premiere on a grand scale, and indeed I find its multithreading to be minimal in improvement.
Click to expand...

This is interesting to know. I was under the impression that the CPU was more important than the GPU.

So I might be better off upgrading my graphics card than going from a Core2 Duo 2.2GHz to, say, a Core2 Quad 2.5GHz?
 
So you guys are editing GH1 AVCHD footage directly in Premiere and then removing pulldown on export? Have you tried comparing your exported footage to the same clip with pulldown removed by something like Neoscene or Virtualdub/AVIsynth/FFDShow?

In the few tests I've done, I found that Premiere 4.1 caused image degradation and color changes when used to remove the pulldown from GH1 clips. This leads me to believe that Premiere can't properly remove pulldown from GH1 footage.
 
Not sure if this is a good way since this is the first time I've had to deal with pulldown removal...

I used a combination of Avisynth and Vdub to remove pulldown from the MTS files and ended up with 24p AVI files. I then edited these in Premiere and exported as a 1080p24 BD-R.

But it's such a pain that I've started shooting at 720p60 instead of 1080i60 so there is no pulldown issue.
 
By the way, I upgraded my video card to a GeForce 8400GS which has built in H.264 decoding.

This meant I could reclaim the 256MB of RAM previously used for the onboard video adapter and XP now shows I have 3.25GB of memory.

CPU usage during playback is down to about 20 - 30% (versus 50 - 70% before)... but I still get that weird jumping effect when watching 60p footage.

Maybe I'll hunt around for a deal on a Core 2 Quad after all. It would be nice to cut down those long rendering times.
 
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