how long should AVCHD importing take?

[richard plumb]

how long should it take to import AVCHD clips? Tryign to import one now which is 13 minutes long and its saying it'll take 25ish minutes. Tried the little card reader that came with my card (sandisk) and thats basically the same as using my camcorder directly.

does imovie08 add any overhead? Is it just copying straight off the card first or converting to AIC on the fly which might cap its speed?

Just wondering in case I can get a dramatic speed up using a particular USB2 card reader to get the most out of it. Its a class 4 or 6 card, can't remember which, which should have decent read speeds. You'd think it could do more than 8Mb/s anyway

[rhubarbe]

If you use the card reader and copy the clip from your card to your PC then you'll know what the problem is.

If it still takes ages it's your editing programme, if it doesn't, it's the copying fro cam to PC.

[b1nuzz]

I find that on my PC, with the SDHC card directly into the PC (sony media centre) it takes roughly 3 minutes per GB. That is roughly though.

If i do it through the camera via USB it is about the same, maybe slightly slower but not dramatically.

[Mr Lazy]

Always worth copying to the PC first in case the card reader decides to corrupt the card for whatever reason (I've had this happen and lost two photos).

I find that when copying from a Kingston Class 4 card in my HF100 it peaks at 6MB/sec and averages around 4MB/sec ie. slow. When using the internal card reader in my laptop it is 1.5MB/sec ie. painful.

So I bought one of these:
http://www.sandisk.co.uk/Products/It...SB_Reader.aspx (bit hard to find)
which manages 12MB/sec (might be more with a Class 6)

though I also borrowed one of these to try:
http://www.sandisk.co.uk/Products/It...derWriter.aspx
and got 10-11MB/sec