Hardware Requirements for HD (Sony AVCHD) Editing

BenA2

I'm currently researching the purchase of a Sony HDR-SR11 and video editing software and my primary concern is that I will not be able to edit the HD video from this camera due to the potential processor limits of my computer.

My ultimate end goal is to produce short (5-10 minute) HD home videos and slide shows with 30-60s embedded video clips with 2-channel soundtracks, cut and fade transitions, and basic titling. My target output resolution is 720p HD (1280x720). I'll be posting the results to SmugMug, playing them on our home HDTV (via. a PC), and burning them to DVDs for grandparents.

I have a Lenovo Thinkpad with a 2.2 GHz Dual Core Pentium and 2GB of RAM with Windows Vista Home Premium.

The two editing programs I'm looking at are:

Adobe Premier Elements 7
System Requirements:
- 1.8GHz processor with SSE2 support; 3GHz processor required for HDV or Blu-ray; dual-core processor required for AVCHD
- For Windows Vista: 1GB of RAM (2GB required for HDV, AVCHD, or Blu-ray)

Sony Vegas Movie Studio 9 Platinum Edition
System Requirements:
- 800 MHz processor (2.8 GHz recommended for HDV and AVCHD)
- 256 MB RAM (512 MB RAM recommended for HDV and AVCHD)

Based on these requirements and recommendations, it looks like it's a stretch to say that my machine meets them. So, I'm concerned my machine will not be able to edit the Sony AVCHD files.

For those that have some experience with this, I'd appreciate your advice on the following:
1) Can I record files in 720P on the HDR-S11 so that I'm working with files with a smaller bit rate? Would that provide a real-world significant benefit in editing speed?
2) Has anyone used either of these programs to edit HD video, ideally AVCHD? If so, have you had any success doing so on a computer with less than the required processor speed?
3) Can anyone recommend one editing program over the other. Or, perhaps another PC alternative?

Thanks for any advice you can offer.

iotashan

I'd say you're pushing the limits of your laptop, and you should consider getting a low cost but high-power desktop to do your video editing on.

I'm able to do h.264 editing on my Macbook (2.0ghz Core 2 Duo, 4gb ram) in iMovie with relative ease... It's the exporting that takes FOREVER. What takes hours on my Macbook takes minutes on my Mac Pro.

Shan

iotashan

Don't forget the trial... Can't hurt to see how painfully slow it is:

http://www.adobe.com/go/trypremiere_elements

BenA2

iotashan wrote:

Don't forget the trial... Can't hurt to see how painfully slow it is:

http://www.adobe.com/go/trypremiere_elements

Thanks for the advice. Unfortunately, I can't trial the camera. So, I don't have the right files to trial the software with.

If you're saying that my system might be sufficient for the editing, and just pushing it for the exporting, I can live with that (for now).

Thanks

BenA2

My own answers
For anyone monitoring this thread for info, I thought I'd provide my own answers to my questions after muddling through it all myself.

BenA2 wrote:

1) Can I record files in 720P on the HDR-S11 so that I'm working with files with a smaller bit rate? Would that provide a real-world significant benefit in editing speed?

No. The HDR-S11/S12 cameras record either in 1080 AVCHD or 480 SD, no resolution in between.

BenA2 wrote:

2) Has anyone used either of these programs to edit HD video, ideally AVCHD? If so, have you had any success doing so on a computer with less than the required processor speed?

I've now used both Adobe Premier Elements 7 and Sony Vegas Movie Studio 9 Platinum Edition to edit AVCHD files from the HDR-S11 on a dual core 2.2 GHz machine and succeeded with both. Editing, particularly preview rendering of transitions, is significantly less snappy than editing SD video. Final rendering is taking about 6X true speed for just about any compressed format (H.264, MPG2, etc.) at 720p. Neither of these is ideal, but, for what I'm doing, it is quite acceptable.

BenA2 wrote:

3) Can anyone recommend one editing program over the other. Or, perhaps another PC alternative?

I ended up choosing Vegas over Premier Elements because I felt Elements was more sluggish. It seems like Adobe packs in a bunch of overhead to produce a very nice UI, at the expense of performance. Vegus has a less refined look to the UI, but seems to be the better performer.

iotashan

Good to know.

FYI, iMovie on my MacBook does a great job with editing HD video. However, rendering video into h.264 takes about twice as long as on my Mac Pro. It's amazing the difference that dual quad-core Xeons make vs a Core 2 Duo.

jhelms

Silly question (maybe) but is anyone using Windows Movie Maker to edit any short wmv-hd / HDV files?