I must disagree with the previous post even though David knows a lot more about video than I do. Here's why:

I did still photography for years and used a series of SLR & DSLR cameras. I pretty much got hooked on good resolution years ago. I have a 42" HDTV. I wanted to show my photos on my TV so I got a PS3 which does that job very well. I quickly became aware of the fact that photos are still and TV was designed for motion. So I switched cameras and got a Panasonic GH1 that takes HD aspect ratio stills and full HD (1920x1080) video in AVCHD format.

Of course I realized from my photo editing experience that editing video would be a major difference requiring both some learning and better equipment. So I got a new PC with an i7 CPU, 6GB RAM, and nVidia 9600GT. I already had dual monitors.

I tested 2 video editors that could handle AVCHD files directly: Vegas MS and PowerDirector. It was clear to me that Vegas was the superior product so I bought it. Since that time (about a year ago) I have learned a lot about video editing and how complicated it can be. Of course I know that there is much more to learn, but so far I' feel like I'm doing pretty well.

For my purposes I find my system works fine. During editing the playback window is jerky sometimes, and sometimes it skips over transitions. But for me its the end result that counts, and when I play back rendered files on my HDTV the results are terrific.

As someone here once told me, if you want performance like the pros you have to pay the pro prices. Since I am a mere amateur I can't justify this of course, but I find that a reasonable level of performance can easily be had for consumer level costs.

Of course my work doesn't come close to professional quality, but that's not my intent. I can mix stills and videos of the places I visit (most recently Machu Picchu) and showing this on my HDTV is very cool indeed.

I don't know what the fuss is all about. I use a sony HDR-CX520v avchd camera, edit in VMS Plat, and burn it to a DVD in Avchd format. Sure, the video is not like a blu-ray, pretty close when played on a Sony Blu-ray player onto my flat screen HD TV. I can burn using my DVD-R disks and my DVD burner. The video preview on VMS is choppy, and the audio is not always in sync, but it all pans out in the rendering. Don't get discouraged. Try editing a short video, about 5 min. worth, it should come out fine.
Aloha!

hmm, it just doesn't seem like an advance if it doesn't surpass the old technology on all levels (or i guess you could say that the editing world is just still not ready for this advance). i just can't see waiting through the whole rendering process to see if major transitions and effects came out right.

specific questions:
1 if i need to "pay the pro's prices" well, what do they use? does mac make a significant difference over pc?
2 what about these resolution reducing programs? what resolution do you need to take it down to in order to get it to preview smoothly? how much of an extra step is this?
3 what are other HD format options beside AVCHD?

thanks!
david j

Hi Skrootayp
1. There are system suggestions here: http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/mastersuite. Take these to your local computer shop and they will be able to do it for half this price. But you probably still won't get decent multi-track AVCHD playback. I have a core i7 quad with 8GB RAM and cannot in Vegas playback AVCHD in full res. This is because Vegas does not leverage the graphics card. It is sad that the whole range of other cheaper editing programs will let me play back full scale AVCHD. But really only one track without a performance hit. The truth is that at this stage AVCHD is an acquisition format rather than an editing format. There is nothing magic about a Mac that will let it outperform a similar spec PC, but it will cost significantly more. In addition, Final Cut Pro is now clunky and outdated, never could natively handle AVCHD, and may not in future be updated. Macs do not play nicely with BluRay. Despite having been an industry standard for video editing in previous years, Apple now seems to have dropped the ball.
2. You can successfully edit AVCHD by using intermediates and proxies. There are a whole range of free conversion programs that will let you build proxies.
3. HDV, Mpeg2, P2, etc. But as a compromise between, cost, ease, storage, quality and convenience nothing beats AVCHD. In my opinion, the format is magic and totally worth it.

thanks guys!

david