Question about converting AVCHD for editing
 

Hello all.

My shop (tv station) recently purchased a slew full of the NXCams. I'm wondering what is a good format/codec to convert the .MTS files to for HD editing.

Our creative service editors have the following setup:

Intel Pentium 4, 3.20ghz
2gb ram
ATI Radeon 9550 X/1050 series

Creative services edits with Adobe Premiere 1.5. News with Edius.

Any help is greatly appreciated!

Someone PLEASE correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think you can edit HD in any format with 2gb of ram, a single card processor, and that videocard.

I had to buy a brand new computer to barely hit the requirements for HD editing in premiere. It was $1,200 but gets the job done nicely. I really hope there is a way to do what you want to do with your equipment, but I do not believe it is possible

Yes, you can edit with THIS: Corel VideoStudio X3.
BUT it works with proxies.
BUT you will need a lot of time to export in HD.
Acceptable times if you downconvert to SD.

Dual core is a must for HD.
2 Gigas of ram is OK with XP.
3 or more with Vista or 7.

Good combo is: 7 64x, 4 gigas RAM, quad core and the newest software you can afford.
AVCHD is the worse codec for edit, today.

Also Linux will be a viable option;
OpenShot (something like Windows Movie Maker),
OpenShot Video Editor
Kdenlive (buggy, is a Premiere 6.5, aprox.).
Kdenlive | Free and open source video editor for GNU/Linux, Mac OS X and FreeBSD
Avidemux: a killer app to cut editing (no transitions). Very simple, awesome and fast as light.

Yes you can! I know, because I did it! Convert everything to tiny proxies, then edit and render with, say, Vegas Platinum 9, which doesn't use the videocard. Unfortunately the whole process and render times drove me mad, so I bought an i7 quad with 8GB RAM and if I want to handle more than one track of AVCHD I still need intermediates or proxies.

Edius 5.5 will edit AVCHD native just fine on a quad core but for best performance use an i7 processor.

Ron Evans