AVCHD Editing Newbie

[Len Charnoff]

Just purchased a Sony SR11 at Costco. I know I have to upgrade my computer. I'm using a 5 year old XP machine with 1 gb of ram and 128mb video card. I'm editing with Pinnacle Studio 12.1 I will be buying a new computer in the next couple of weeks. When I play the video on the HD TV it looks great. It's a little choppy on the computer screen and I assume its because of the low horsepower in the computer.

I'll probably purchase a quadcore vista machine.

Quick questions:

1. Do I need a 512 mb graphics card
2. Other suggestions on NLE programs like Studio 12
3. Suggestions on where to share HD video online.

Tnx.

[Andy Olson]

Hey Len,

The choppiness is most likely your computer struggling to keep up. This can be the cpu as well as the harddrive. Make to to get Sata harddrives and maybe even RAID them together.

1. You don't need a 512MB graphics card. Most Video applications don't run through the graphics card. 128mb or 256mb is fine.

2. Sony Vegas and Adobe Premiere Pro are good choices but quite a bit pricier than Studio 12.

3. Vimeo.com is a good hd video sharing site and I think Youtube has started hosting hd as well.

Best,
Andy

[Len Charnoff]

Andy,

Tnx for the super fast reply. Below is a 14 second sample that I posted on Blip TV. The subject were not impressed that it was HD

http://e7.video.blip.tv/109000644115...fHDDogs913.mp4

[Bruce Foreman]

Originally Posted by Andy Olson

Hey Len,

The choppiness is most likely your computer struggling to keep up. This can be the cpu as well as the harddrive. Make to to get Sata harddrives and maybe even RAID them together.

A very fast dual core cpu can keep up with up to 1440x1080 video. 1920x1080 pretty much requires a very fast quad core, Pinnacle says 2.66 Ghz MINIMUM for their software. My Q6600 2.4Ghz cpu has a somewhat difficult time with the 1920x1080 so I kind of believe them.

Originally Posted by Andy Olson

1. You don't need a 512MB graphics card. Most Video applications don't run through the graphics card. 128mb or 256mb is fine.

I'm afraid my experience says he does. I had to replace my ATI Radeo HD 2400 XT 256MB card with an Nvidia GeForce 8800GT with 512MB in order to successfully edit 1920x1080. With Pinnacle Studio 11.1.2 I could edit 1440x1080 but if I even attempted to try 1920x1080 I got warnings about not enough graphics memory, hardware acceleration was shut off and even then everything ground to a halt. Cyberlink Powerdirector 7 Ultra which is less demanding of computer resources would'nt even display 1920x1080 in the editing window until the graphics card change.

I saw an immediate dramatic change in editing stability with the Nvidia card and 512MB. I have Pinnacle Studio 12 and am able to use it even with the cpu at 2.4GHz.

If I could afford it right now I'd be looking hard at a new machine with that Intel i7 processor and would go with a graphics card with 1 GB on it. Several graphics cards are coming out with new acceleration capabilities to accomodate what some of the NLE's can do with it. I need to read up on it. Something called CUDA.

[Larry Horwitz]

Cuda is nVidia's texhnology to accelerate some video processing and editing functions in the graphics card. It truly delivers up to 5X speedups on certain filtering in my time trials here. Both Cyberlink Power Director and TMPGE Express use it, and other software is likely to follow.

Since the 512MB nVidia 8800 GT can be purchased for below $150 with careful ahopping, I definitely would consider it for AVCHD editing.

Larry

[Larry Horwitz]

Len,

Also, ExposureRoom.com is a great place to host HD content online. And SATA drives without RAID are more than adequate for AVCHD video editing.

There are some lengthy threads on this forum disxussing several other AVCHD editing and authoring programs with a variety of opinions and comments. You can get some ideas from looking at them which might suit you.

Larry

[Len Charnoff]

Thanks everyone for the great info and advice.

Any I7 machines out now?

[Bruce Foreman]

Dell has it in one of their XPS desktop's right now. Saw it in a brochure that came in the mail but didn't keep it. Now is not the time for me to go for it.

[Larry Horwitz]

A recent discussion on another thread in this forum brought out the apparent fact that the new i7 chips have a defect which has yet to be corrected, and I personally agree entirely with Bruce that it is too early to buy the i7.

It is a major change in chip architecture (no frontside bus, built in memory controller) and it will be a while until all the issues are resolved. Since it is also extremely expensive, and the "ancient" quadcore Penryn chips have been on the market for a year now and have dropped 50% or more in price, I would suggest anybody who wants to buy soon should seriously consider a Penryn-based (rather than an i7 based) computer.

They handle AVCHD extremely well, particularly when you get the faster 2.8 GHz and above versions.

Larry

[Mugurel Dragusin]

Originally Posted by Len Charnoff

I know I have to upgrade my computer. I'm using a 5 year old XP machine with 1 gb of ram and 128mb video card. I'm editing with Pinnacle Studio 12.1

Try reading my post here: http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/973491-post6.html
See if the Pinnacle Studio allows for the trick I've described. If it does then you may have an alternative until you can properly upgrade your computer, even then, this trick makes things a lot easier :)