I am new to doing digital video editing, and would appreciate any advice. I have the Sony SR-12.

My Computer is an Acer Laptop TravelMate 8210 with the following specs.

Intel Core 2 Duo T7200 2Ghz
Bus 667 Mhz
160 GB ATA 5400rpm hard drive
ATI Radeon X1600 Graphics card with 256 MB DDR
4 GB Ram (Max)
DVD Burner
Windows XP SP2

I also bought a 320GB external USB Hard Drive.

Will I be able to edit AVCHD with this computer? I am only doing home movie stuff at this point, so I realize I may have to be patient when rendering etc.

What is the best software program for editing AVCHD? I am considering Vegas Pro 8. Like many folks, I have a limited budget.

If I were to invest in one thing to improve my set up, what would that be? Thanks in advance for your help.

yes you will.

But, there are some "but".
we are speaking about HD content, so, off course, a quad core cpu would be better and it would speed up rendering process. but you have a notebook...

4Gb RAM are enough, however, you have to know you will use about 3-3.2Gb and not more because the 32bit limit...
off course to use all 4gb you have to run Vista64 or Xp 64...

Problem n.1: your graphic adapter is not the best especially if you use particular special effects...the best choice for editing video would be 768/1Gb of dedicated memory.
a 7900GS (even if is 256mb) would be firmly better.

Problem n.2: HDD. The problem of videoediting in general is big temporary files...So you would have at least one dedicated HDD, that does not be the o.s. one. And 5400rpm off course is slow...7200rpm and RAID0 would be the best and economic choice in term of speed/cost.

I mean that your editing and rendering won't fly, but not beacuse avchd...it would not fly also with HDV editing...

ciao!

If I were to invest in one thing to improve my set up, what would that be?

HDD! Prices today are bordering on ludicrous. If you do go with Vegas Pro, simply convert out of AVCHD using the included Cineform codec and you'll be all set.

Aaron,

Thanks for the tip. Can you tell me how I can convert to the Cineform codec? Or point me to a place on the forums where this is discussed? What program is used to do the conversion? Thanks!

Aaron,

Thanks for the tip. Can you tell me how I can convert to the Cineform codec? Or point me to a place on the forums where this is discussed? What program is used to do the conversion? Thanks!

You use Vegas to convert by rendering to Cineform, be warned though it'll take a long to time to render AVCHD to Cineform on a laptop. If you're only doing basic editing I probably wouldn't bother to convert to Cineform first, the Cinefrom files will eat up a lot of hard drive space.

Pinnacle Studio 11 plus ($99.95 or less if on sale) will edit AVCHD with no transcoding to anything needed.

Edited AVCHD can be rendered to an AVCHD BluRay compliant file on standard DVD media and played back on BluRay players or PS3 (DO NOT PUT THIS DISK IN A REGULAR DVD PLAYER! It will not be recognized and may fail to eject at all). The disk image file created can be viewed on computer monitor using the AVCHD player software that comes with some cams (Canon HF10/100).

Edited AVCHD can also be rendered to 1280x720p Windows Media File (WMV) that looks great on my Samsung 21.6" monitor, and last it can be rendered to a standard def DVD for playback on standard DVD players.

Actual BluRay media disk burning support is pending for either a patch update (free download) or next version (discounted upgrades offered to registered owners).

This software is running on my Dell laptop with Intel Core Duo T7250 2.0GHz with 3GB RAM and integrated graphics display.

Pinnacle is not one of the "favorites" but I've been with this software from an early DV version thru 7, 8, 9, 10, and now 11 plus.

Jamie, you render to Cineform from within Vegas Pro like Tony said. Tony, I'm getting almost real-time conversion results with NEO HDV running on a cheap Dual Core 1.6 desktop. Since conversion results are entirely processor dependent, assuming you have a suitable HDD subsystem (which I know his does not), I would imagine Jamie would get better results than I due to his laptop having a faster processor after doing this...

Jamie, if you're going to stick with the laptop, then do yourself a favor by picking up a PCMCIA Cardbus SATA-2 adapter and a smokin' external HDD system. ***In theory*** this should eliminate the laptop performance penalty that Tony is alluding to.

Thanks Aaron and Bruce for your comments. I am currently using Vegas 7.0e. I cannot get AVCHD clips that I shot in 1920X1080 to even open in Vegas. My computer either crashes, or I get an error message saying the file format is not supported. If I change my camera (SR-12) to any of the other 1440X1080 recording format, I can open them in Vegas 7 just fine.

I want to convert the 1920 stuff to some format I can open and edit in Vegas 7. Any suggestions for a third party conversion program? Thanks! Anyone used VASST Gearshift?

I know Vegas 8 PRO and platinum has native AVCHD support.

Never heard of Gearshift. I've used VASST AVCHD Upshift. It works but it's an extra step and takes time.