What's the Easiest HD material/codec that I can natively edit in PP CS3?
My main priority at the moment is speed and efficiency.
In contrast, what's the most difficult?
Thank you.

I suppose 720p30 material in a very lightly compressed codec like huffyuv avi would be the 'easiest' on your cpu, although somewhat demanding on your hardrives because of the large fiiles.

I assume you mean 'native' in the sense of not needing an external codec like Cineform installed, in which case I suppose huffyuv isnt really native (even though its free and takes 2 clicks to install).

Personally I think the cineform codecs (Aspect 1440x1080i or Prospect 1920x1080i) provide the best balance of file size vs. processor demand vs quality, but they are quite pricey.

I suppose 720p30 material in a very lightly compressed codec like huffyuv avi would be the 'easiest' on your cpu, although somewhat demanding on your hardrives because of the large fiiles.

I assume you mean 'native' in the sense of not needing an external codec like Cineform installed, in which case I suppose huffyuv isnt really native (even though its free and takes 2 clicks to install).

Personally I think the cineform codecs (Aspect 1440x1080i or Prospect 1920x1080i) provide the best balance of file size vs. processor demand vs quality, but they are quite pricey.
Thanks for your response.
I'm aware of Cineform's ability to assist in HDV editing, but do either Cineform or Huffyuv provide an efficient intermediate for AVCHD to be edited in Premier?

Cineform is too expensive and I can't get Huffyuv to work with this vista system.. either the latest or an earlier version that is supposed to work.. really sucks.

My time is too valuable to spend hours on workarounds with free software.

I consider Cineform to be a good value.

Another possibility would be the Lagarith Lossless Video Codec (google for it).

It's multiprocesor aware, seems stable in XP (no clue about Vista sorry), and free.

In YUY2 mode it produces files that are about 2.4X the size of the equivalent Cineform file.

Thanks Graham I will check it out!