Anyone using Premier Pro for 1080i AVCHD footage?

[kevshed]

Hi all,

Well, the time has come for me to do something with the 40GB of AVCHD clips of my nipper... now 2.... due to non-stop demands of all the family

In the past, i use Premier Pro for HD work (off DV), which i quite liked. I have a high end PC, and CS4 with lots of RAM, 64-bit which is supposed to help etc.

So - my intent, was to go back to Premier and give it a go.

Has anyone used Premier CS4, with AVCHD (Sony TG3), to complete a project? (Raw footage -> BD) ?

I've seen Sony Vegas mentioned a lot of the forums, but im reluctant to try an learn a whole new app unless i need too.

Any guidance apprecaited.
thanks,
Kev

[thudspud]

Yes I use it, same camera (tg3) but it is bloody slow for editing AVCHD, my footage is shot at max quality (16mbps). Used CS3 loads with HDV footage and it was fine but got an upgrade to CS4 for AVCHD support and it is a real step backwards, the same footage that would playback fine in the timeline/source monitor on CS3 now jerks along in CS4. I have to have the preview window at 25% maximum for it to play along happily and even then the quality only on draft, no way with it do a full screen preview onto my 2nd monitor unless I don't mind seeing 1 frame out of every 25!

My computer is slighty under their recomended specs for editing HD, E6600 Dual 2.4GHz, 4gb ram, Geforce 7950 512mb graphics, separate scratch disk, but I have read online that even people with systems over the spec still struggle. 64 bit is supposed to be a lot better at it though than 32 bit which I am running.

I haven't burnt to a blu-ray as I don't have a burner but I have converted to files for my PS3 to read and the quality is superb.

My brother uses Vegas and likes it but I tried the trial from the sony website to see if it was better but I couldn't get on with it at all, didn't stick with it long enough to rate the performance.

Let me know how you get on and if it works smoothly for you, what processor do you have? I thought a quick processor upgrade might help to a faster quad core but my motherboard won't take anything higher than an e6700 which is only a minor improvement over what I have.

[ade4all]

cs4.1 update has meant i can edit native avchd fairly smoothly with core 2duo 2.5ghz, try the update should make things a lot better

[thudspud]

Originally Posted by ade4all

cs4.1 update has meant i can edit native avchd fairly smoothly with core 2duo 2.5ghz, try the update should make things a lot better

got the update already, had to get that for AVCHD support, still no better though.

[mmace]

I use it all the time for editing AVCHD and export at 1080p 23.976fps with 5.1 DD (for Blu-ray, 25fps isn't supported at 1080p)

very quick, runs smoothly and encodes quickly too

i7 920 with 3Gb DDR3

[twoodley]

No problems for me either. Silky smooth.
Vista Ultimate 64
i7
8GB RAM

[thudspud]

hmmm, looks like I need to upgrade to an i7 system!

[kevshed]

Thanks for the replies.... Looks like i should have no problems... cheers !

I'm running Core i7 940, 8GB RAM, 64Bit.... so fingers crossed - i'll let you know how i get on when i have a play.

Thanks for the posts.

Kev

[sierramike]

Hi,

I was wondering about the necessity to upgrade to an i7 system to edit AVCHD using Premiere Pro CS4 ?

In fact I curently have a Core2Duo E7200 processor, on an Asus P5K motherboard and 2GB of RAM. The graphics card is a Geforce 7300/128M, which is too light I know.

I was planning on adding 2GB of RAM, switch the graphics card to a Geforce 9400GT/512M or a Radeon HD4350/512M which are passively cooled and not that expensive after all, and change the processor to a Core2Quad Q9550.

Would that be enough for editing AVCHD or is there a REAL need to switch to an i7 architecture ?

Thanks a lot for answer, I'm wondering about all this before running to the store and get an HD Camcorder

[kevshed]

changing your gfx card doesnt really help with this sort of application - perforamnce is all about CPU, memory (capacity and bandwidth) and disk performance.

Moving to Core i7 doenst only give a cpu performance benefit, is gives you 3-channel memory, which helps quite a lot in such applications. Personally, i'd say the upgrade probably is worthwhile if you want to do this sort of work.

If you werent moving very compute intensive data around i'd say what you have is fine.

[ade4all]

i've heard that sone nvidia cards can help with avchd in cs4.1 - not sure the technical reasons though