Now I am trying to edit.

I capture the video... but its in a highly compressed .m2t file

My question.... how can I re-encode this video into a usable file.... for my p4 computer.

I have 4 terrabytes...space is no factor...

but the m2t file is too compressed in Vegas for me to really work with it.

THANKS!

Not sure what you intend to do and what you mean by "useable" but you could always re-encode into the Cineform Codec which creates a cineform .avi file.

Jon

Your P4 should be just fine for editing HDV natively - I also use a P4 @ 3.0 GHz with 1GB RAM and an old 64 MB video card, and it's working just fine, with real time playback and no jitter/stutter on the Premire Pro timeline.

Depending on what you intend to do with your footage, you can work with it as is, or you can decompress it into any number of other formats from DV to uncompressed using mostly free software like MPEG Streamclip or VirtualDub.

Your P4 should be just fine for editing HDV natively - I also use a P4 @ 3.0 GHz with 1GB RAM and an old 64 MB video card, and it's working just fine, with real time playback and no jitter/stutter on the Premire Pro timeline.

A p4 will almost be fine..... right up until you start layering on the color correction, contrast changes, and text overlays with transparency effects. Add all taht and Vegas will slow way down. You find you need to switch your preview window to 1/4 size and then down to draft quality just to keep up the frame rate.

I have edited native HDV footage in m2t format from my FX1 on both a Core 2 Duo with 2GB of DDR2 and on a P4HT@3GHz with 2.5GB of DDR2.