explain please what computer do I need

What processor do you have and with how much RAM? Which video graphics card do you have?

I am going to update computer also. I have been fine with hp Pavilion 904on . I need the new one to have firewire in and out for my current video needs. Firwire is hard to find on new computers. I have never used I-MAC but have been told they are the best for video editing.What do you suggest PC wise?
I have been a videographer for over 20 years and several cameras. My current main camera is the Sony vx-2100. I have never tried tapeless recording but it looks like the future.Need to study up on this type of capture and editing.
Thanks for your help! sorry for the long post.

Note that often an older computer is ... well ... adequate, if not ideal. My main video workstation is an appallingly ancient Q6600 3GHz with a mere 2GB RAM, running Windows XP Pro SP2 and NO GPU at all. It edits AVCHD 1080 perfectly well.

Note that i said "edits". Yes, editing is great and i can do any edits with any AVCHD material i wish and it all works well. True, the preview rate is abysmal and playing back the final render is iffy, but i can get the job done. If i wait until the end to add any effects or color correction, and preview at quarter/draft, i can get a good enough preview rate to see what's going on. Rendering also takes ages, but generally all my rendering happens while i'm sleeping so i don't care about how long it takes.

So, when folks tell you you need a new computer for HD, don't run out and spend all your money on the latest thing right away. Feel free to try it on your current hardware and see how it works.

I can't see the point of spending extra money on a Mac when you don't really get much more power than a much cheaper PC. If you like a cool computer constructed really well and you have gobs of extra cash to throw around, sure. Otherwise, it's way beyond the point of diminishing returns as far as power and speed are concerned.

You're unlikely to find ANY new computers with firewire in a laptop form or in mid-range desktops. If you absolutely need firewire you probably won't be able to get a laptop at all. If your desktop has an open slot you can stick in a $5 firewire card. Personally, i keep my 7 year old laptop around just for capturing firewire and then transfer the files over to the newer PCs. Since i don't use that old laptop for anything else chances are it will last as long as my old DV camcorder does.

I have the NX-5u and love it, going tapeless is great (as long as you have the room to keep backups of your cards) no more real time capture it makes things very fast.
I also bought the optional flash disk unit for the camera and use it to capture SD and the cards to capture HD. that way I can have either format for editing.

Also you do not need firewire with this camera all capture is done with USB or you can take the cards out and use a card reader, with the optional flash disk you use USB as well ( the camera does not even have a firewire port)


The only problem I have with the camera is it can get heavy when hand holding.
I use both movie studio and Vegas Pro to edit and both seem to too do well.

I have an old Intel q6600 as well with 4 gig of ram and running Movie Studio 12 and it will run AVCHD, the renders will be a little slow but it edits just fine. My main edit machine is a Core i7 950 3.06 G ( a couple of years old now) with 12 gigs of ram and I have no problem with that format at all and the render time is pretty good.
With the new cameras firewire is pretty much a thing of the past, but like Chienworks said you can always add a card if you need to.

Good luck and once you go tapeless you will never go back to tape.

Thanks everyone.
When capture with NX-5u tapless what file format on the cards. I have been told they are in fat 32 files and if so there in about 15 min. files. Is that true and if so how hard to join together without noticable space between files. I do a lot of concerts and ballet .Sometimes 90 mins in length. Thanks again,./ I can always count on this forum for info.

These camcorders generally use FAT32 formatted cards. The maximum duration of each file created depends upon the chosen bitrate and could be as little as 15 mins. Many camcorders are supplied with software that will seamless stitch these files together. If such software is not supplied, the free utility TSMuxeR (http://www.videohelp.com/tools/tsMuxeR) will do the job.

My AVCHD camcorder (JVC) records MTS files to FAT32 cards. Even at the highest bitrate, around 23Mbps, i get a little over 23 minutes per 4GB file. If your camera has a higher bitrate choice you'll get correspondingly shorter run times per file.

I stitch them together seamlessly using the very simple DOS copy /b command, for example:

copy /b 00001.MTS + 00002.MTS + 00003.MTS joined_file.mts

This joins the three files from the camera together into one single file named "joined_file.mts", or whatever you care to name it. It works faster, easier, simpler, and better than any utility that may come from the camera manufacturer. In fact, generally i recommend that any software CD you get from the camera manufacturer should be scratched, shattered, burned, and tossed without ever installing it. My experience so far is that the software the manufacturer gives you is usually painfully difficult and annoying to use, of very limited or nearly non-existent usefulness, and is often far more harmful to your computer than most viruses, trojans, and other malware.

Thanks again. I have a lot to study and learn

My experience of joining files is different from that reported by Chienworks. I have tried the DOS concatenation method but not always found the join glitch free. My camcorder (also JVC) came with an OEM version of PowerDirector but nothing specifically for importing video. On the other hand, I have read a number of accounts from people who received software that they found very useful for this purpose.

I feel that all three methods; DOS, supplied software and tsMuxeR are worth trying until you find one that works consistently.

I have a Sony HDD camcorder which came with a handy software utility called PMB. This software easily copies clips from the camcorder, arranges them in folders of my choice and creates filenames with the time and date of the clip's creation.

In my experience the DOS method of joining only works seamlessly when the join occurs at a point where there is no video, ie at a short blank section. I often use this method to create a large project out of several small ones but I have to make sure that there is at least 1 second of black at the beginning and end of each edited project.

Has mentioned previously in this thread, once you experience tapeless capture, you'll not want to go back.

Jack, the DOS concatenate method only works with transport stream files. Your rendered projects most likely are not of this type and you risk creating files that aren't playable when you try to do that.

I can only go on my experience. The last Blu-Ray project I finished had 26 short projects. When I rendered them to avc DVDAS struggled to handle them all so I used the DOS method to concatenate them into two files (I had to have two files 'cos the first batch was shot at 1440 and the second batch at 1920). DVDAS handled these OK and the result was perfect on my Blu-Ray player.

Thanks though for your input.