Computer requirements for editing AVCHD

kmac6 wrote on 12/4/2010, 7:46 AM
I currently own a Canon HV20. I create SD DVDs (no blu-ray players in the house at this time) of vacations and family events for personal use. I use VMS 9 Build 55. I will be updating to VMS10 or Vegas Pro 10 soon.

Most of my editing consists of combining clips, trimming clips, adding titles and transitions, and adding some effects here and there.

My computer is an HP m9200t
Processor - Intel Core 2 Quad Q9450 2.66 GHz
RAM - 3GB
OS - 32-bit Vista Home SP2
Video Card - NVidia GeForce 8600 GT

I am interested in buying a Canon Vixia HFS21. The main reason that I want to get a flash memory camera is to avoid having to capture the video off of tape. I would probably record in the 17Mbps mode.

From reading the Sony forums and others, I understand that editing native AVCHD is resource intensive. I would prefer to not create intermediate files to edit as that defeats some of the purpose of avoiding the tape capture and takes up more hard drive space.

I was wondering if my computer is powerful enough to edit AVCHD files and create SD DVDs? I am guessing that it is probably on the low end of what is needed. Is it powerful enough to successfully render projects to Blu-Ray disks?

Comments

Chienworks wrote on 12/4/2010, 8:35 AM
Edit? I can edit AVCHD on my 1.8GHz Turion laptop, no problem. It's just a matter of patience. Preview is bad; have to do a lot of RAM prerending. In the end though i can edit and create an output file successfully. My desktops are CoreDuo 3GHz and they zip through it better, but previews still require RAM prerenders.

As far as intermediate files, the time spent creating them is paid back many times over by much faster editing and rendering. I might spend an hour converting AVCHD to .mxf, but then i might save 6 hours editing and 3 hours rendering. I wouldn't consider sticking with native AVCHD for any project longer than a 30 second spot.
Electro_Fixx wrote on 12/4/2010, 8:57 AM
Mine is a I5
3 gb ram
p7p55d motherboard
Asus GTS250 512 MB video card
Windows 7

no problems here except by software
my video cam recors in avchd 60i
render is fast but after encoded with vegas it differs a little from the source file.
can see little blocks of pixels when encoded using sony avc codec.
i moved to mainconcept m2v