Working with AVCHD in VideoStudio 11.5

Pixelation5 · Post by **Pixelation5** » Sun May 10, 2009 4:38 pm

I was wondering if anyone knows if its possible to edit AVCHD in Video Studio 11.5 Plus with;

Pentium 4 3.2Ghz HT
GeForce 7800 GS (AGP)
2GB of RAM

I see it states for non-proxy editting that a PCIe video card is required.. Why would this be the case? I thought the GPU isn't used in video editting?

Black Lab · Post by **Black Lab** » Sun May 10, 2009 5:02 pm

All you have to do is search for AVCHD and you will find plenty of info regarding it. I believe the short answer is no. You need at least a quad core to be able to handle AVCHD.

Post by **Ron P.** » Sun May 10, 2009 5:04 pm

While VS11.5+ is capable of editing AVCHD, I'm afraid your PC is a little to lean. The minimum should be a decent Core-2, and if you intend on doing a lot of editing AVCHD I think you should consider a Quad-Core.

Pixelation5 · Post by **Pixelation5** » Sun May 10, 2009 5:10 pm

How come the system requirnments state a P4 HT is minimum for HDV editing (HDV is AVCHD I assume) if really a quad core is needed?

Black Lab · Post by **Black Lab** » Sun May 10, 2009 5:15 pm

HDV and AVCHD are two completely different animals. HDV is basically MPEG-2, compared to the H.264 codec used for AVCHD.

Post by **Ken Berry** » Sun May 10, 2009 10:25 pm

As Black Lab has said, HDV is high definition mpeg-2, usually filmed on a camera which uses mini-DV tapes, but can also be filmed on certain hard disk cameras. AVCHD is more highly compressed mpeg-4 using the H.264 codec, and is filmed mainlyon cameras using mini-SD cards, but also on a number using hard disk drives.

It is perhaps the most demanding video format currently available. You will be able to edit it with your Pentium 4 with HT using VS's SmartProxy feature, but I don't think AVCHD will play properly on it. Playback, believe it or not, is even more demanding than editing the format!!

For smooth playback, you required at least a Core 2 Duo. I have experienced this myself using a P4 3.0 GHz with HT. I edited some AVCHD but it was very jerky in playback. I thought the editing had not worked, but just happened around that time to buy a Core 2 Duo 2.4 GHz laptop. When I transferred the edited AVCHD to it, it played absolutely smoothly.

HDV on the other hand is not particularly demanding and can be happily edited and played back on even smaller P4s and their AMD equivalents. It has also been editable in VS since version 10. The downside is the mini-DV tapes which of course use real time for capture, rather than the instant transfer of AVCHD.