Here and elsewhere I read about how much computer horsepower is required to play (never mind edit) the AVCHD version of H.264. That is certainly true, but there seems to be a tendency to think that it is true of H.264 generally. That has not been my experience.

I do have trouble playing AVCHD on my dual core Mac Mini, and on my insufficiently powered PCs. On the other hand, when I convert MP4 from the Sanyo HD1 to Apple Intermediate Codec for editing in iMovie (which works very well), I then render in Quicktime H.264 for a file that is about 10% of the size, and which looks great and plays easily.

Hi Peter,
could You please explain how You managed to play some AVCHD video on your Mac. So far my experience has been a total 0 (the .m2t would not play with VLC or open with MPEG Streamclip)... what am I missing???
Thanks,
Luca

There really is no satisfactory way that I have found worthwhile. I have played some of the sample clips on a PC using Elecard. Some of the Japanese clips have a .wmv version that can be played (badly) with flip4mac or windows media player for the Mac.

None of this is worth the trouble, in my opinion. My point in this posting was simply that the problem is with AVCHD, not H.264 per se. There are other versions of H.264 that play very well in Quicktime.

Maybe some improvements will be shown at CES in a few days.