Well for the first time in a while I edited a project naively in HDV instead of using Cineform.
It was unfortunate because the only reason I couldn't use Cineform was because it was a multi-cam shoot and every time I tried to cut that way it would slow to a crawl.

Is it my PC? Is it codec-development that's needed?

I have a 2.0GHz Dual Core Athlon Processor w/ 2 Gigs of RAM on Windows XP SP3.
It's Premiere Pro CS3 3.2.0

Anyway, to say some good things about Cineform....This project was a nightmare. Trying to edit layers of HDV and nested sequences, etc... I dealt with crashes constantly and nothing played smoothly. These issues may have been PC-based, or Adobe glitches, but I never had these problems before when I was using Cineform as an intermediate codec. The project was a nightmare.

Maybe I just need to upgrade my PC, but I'm worried I would just switch to a Mac Pro and start using FCP.

The Adobe SDK has no means for third parties to accelerate multicam. We wish it did.

Sorry to revive an old issue (which I'm sure is a thorn in your side at this point).

Do you see this changing in CS5? I hate having to edit natively and losing all the benefits of Cineform and features of First Light for any project which requires multi-cam editing.

Would love your input if things may change.

EDIT: Sorry, I just noticed this was answered in another thread.

When are you losing the "features of First Light"? It works in multi-cam also.

I usually can't use the multi-cam feature at all if my files are Cineform AVI. It slows to a crawl, I would need to use the original MPEG-2 and edit natively. Is this not the average performance I should expect by using Cineform files during multi-cam?

Or am I incorrect in understanding that I could not use First-Light for my M2T files? I'm still relatively new to First Light.

No other codec and support Active Metadata (as we invented it) so the benefits of FirstLight can only work with CineForm clips.