Can anyone recommend a PC for use with this program?

uncle-buck · Post by **uncle-buck** » Fri Jun 20, 2008 5:02 am

I just bought a new HP workstation (see my profile) to work with VS 11.5 Plus and AVCHD files created by a Canon VIXIA HF100 HD camcorder. It works ok, but preview playbacks with AVCHD files are herky-jerky making them difficult to edit.

I'm inclined to send the new PC back and buy something more powerful. What does anyone recommend?

I did enable Smart Proxy and increased the PC's paging file to 8GB. Thanks for any suggestions or advice.

Post by **Ken Berry** » Fri Jun 20, 2008 5:40 am

The question in your title for this thread should be 'Can anyone recommend a computer for this format?"!!

In reality, there is nothing on the market which is more powerful than your Quad, except a Quad with the latest, more powerful Intel Quad processor, which I am pretty sure is the 8800.

I am afraid you are learning the limitations of dealing with AVCHD, which has to be the most demanding of all video formats regardless of its otherwise admirable qualities. Imagine what it is like for those who had no idea of this, and don't have the luck or money to have a Quad or at the very least a decent Core 2 Duo?! I too have a Quad, and have done a fair amount of work with AVCHD, particularly over the last 4 or 5 weeks. I too have choppy playback in Project mode with AVCHD files, though they play back smoothly in Clip mode, as do the final edited files when I have re-encoded them.

In effect, I just ignore the choppy playback and just use the preview to make sure all the editing bits are there... And I should add that when I do re-encode, I have only once used SmartProxy and that was just to see what it could do. Otherwise I don't use it. But I have been more than happy with the final product, including when I have used VS11.5+ to burn hybrid AVCHD discs on standard DVDs which I can play back in full high def format on my Sony PlayStation 3.

AS a footnote, I know you say you have VS11.5+, but check in the ? symbol in the top right of the VS screen, then 'About VS'. Your version must be 11.5.0157.2 for it to operate correctly (even if choppily in preview!) with AVCHD.

Also be sure to go to the Microsoft DirectX website and update your DirectX 9.0c. Note that DirectX is not part of the Microsoft automatic updates, so you have to do it manually. And though your computer may be new, it will have an older release of DirectX 9.0c. The update will not change the designation from '9.0c', but it will add extra functionality to it which resolves various problems which seem to have occurred with VS possibly as a result of various Windows updates in recent months.

uncle-buck · Post by **uncle-buck** » Fri Jun 20, 2008 1:13 pm

Thank you very much, Ken. I will follow your advice and make sure that VS 11.5 Plus and Direct X are the latest versions and update them if necessary.

What about hard drive DMA? The PC has two 250GB drives running in RAID 1. How do I make sure that DMA is enabled?

Thanks again.

Post by **Ken Berry** » Fri Jun 20, 2008 2:18 pm

If you go to Control Panel > Device Manager, and look at 'IDE ATI/ATAPI Controllers', that will tell you if DMA is enabled for your hard drives. Normally they are by default, though.