Computer specification for play/edit HG10

forestfan · 30-01-2009, 4:11 PM

Hi

Iam still in the process of trying to choose a camcorder I have missed out on great deal for a Canon HV20 for about the same budget I can get hold of a
HG10.

I understand that the computer needs to have reaonable memory and speed and my computer is 4 years old now.

I have the following XP home

AMD athlon 64 processor 3500+

2.19Ghz, 1.00 GB of Ram

Vid Card: NVIDIA GeForce 6200 TurboCache

Sound Card: Realtek AC'97 Audio

is this sufficient enough as I do not want to start spending out more money once I have bought the camcorder?

Thanks again for any help

chrishull3 · 30-01-2009, 11:27 PM

[QUOTE=forestfan;8735500]Hi

Iam still in the process of trying to choose a camcorder I have missed out on great deal for a Canon HV20 for about the same budget I can get hold of a
HG10.

I understand that the computer needs to have reaonable memory and speed and my computer is 4 years old now.

I have the following XP home

AMD athlon 64 processor 3500+

2.19Ghz, 1.00 GB of Ram

If you plan to edit avchd you realy need to get the most powerful pc you can, i fear your present one will not be up to the job.

forestfan · 31-01-2009, 8:36 AM

DV tape it is then!

I am not going to start buying PC's when mine is fine at the moment just for a camcorder.

chrishull3 · 31-01-2009, 10:40 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by forestfan

DV tape it is then!

I am not going to start buying PC's when mine is fine at the moment just for a camcorder.

Tape is still good,but the lowest pc spec i have read that someone edited avchd with was dual core 2gb ram,but with low spec pc software is very inportant.
My laptop is dual core 2ghz-250 gb hardrive-3gb ram-nvida 8880 graphcs card and it wont look at avchd,my desktop is a quad core and that stuggles[it could do avchd but its hassle so i convert my avchd to hdv tape.

montybaber · 31-01-2009, 10:45 AM

This is wierd I have a laptop with amd athlon dual 1.7 with 1 gb of ram and I manage to view and edit clips from my JVC HD3 fine

am i just lucky?

chrishull3 · 31-01-2009, 10:59 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by montybaber

This is wierd I have a laptop with amd athlon dual 1.7 with 1 gb of ram and I manage to view and edit clips from my JVC HD3 fine

am i just lucky?

You are lucky monty do you record in the best quality mode.

montybaber · 31-01-2009, 11:29 AM

yes

I must admit it does occassionally playback a little jumpy but thats not really a problem, was looking at a new laptop anyway but there you go lol

Mr Lazy · 31-01-2009, 8:55 PM

Surely the HD3 records in MPEG2 rather than AVCHD?

zeroice · 31-01-2009, 9:22 PM

get Windows 7 this summer and enjoy native AVCHD playback with minimal system resources

as far as editing goes, try hardware accelerated encoding (Premiere CS4+Quadro, Elecard/Canopus) or smart editing (Nero, Cyberlink, Canon bundled sw)

montybaber · 01-02-2009, 10:55 AM

hi there yes its mpeg 2

forestfan · 01-02-2009, 1:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by zeroice

get Windows 7 this summer and enjoy native AVCHD playback with minimal system resources

as far as editing goes, try hardware accelerated encoding (Premiere CS4+Quadro, Elecard/Canopus) or smart editing (Nero, Cyberlink, Canon bundled sw)

So with Widows 7 and bundled Canon software it could be possible with the PC I have?

zeroice · 01-02-2009, 8:25 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by forestfan

So with Widows 7 and bundled Canon software it could be possible with the PC I have?

For playback on Win7 the HW you have will suffice.
For editing, get another GFX card, preferably Nvidia 9800GT to benefit from CUDA (hardware acceleration using the stream processors).

And add more RAM to the box while the prices are still rockbottom

Go for 4 GB.

The caveat with Canon's bundled SW is that it doesn't run (yet) on x64 systems. Therefore you will "see" only 3.5 GB out of the 4 on a x86 Windows OS. No big deal, Imagemixer does the job beautifully, it handles smart rendering better than anything on the market right now.

Once Cyberlink gets their act together, Power Director will be a strong choice, but for now smart rendering AVCHD is weird. What works well in the latest version (2521) is the hardware accelerated feature (uses CUDA).

Bottomline: get a new gfx card (9800GT) and more RAM.
9800GT is sensible in price/performance, it's not worthed cashing out for a GTX260/280...use the spare cash for RAM/Processor for example.

------------------------
I have a HG20 and AVCHD playback on a Core2Duo 8200 machine/Win7 is beautiful..less than 5% CPU load for 1080 material.
Tested creating an AVCHD disc with Imagemixer 3SE v3 and works perfectly on the PS3. The menus are not bad and there is no quality loss, you can use DL disks as well.

forestfan · 02-02-2009, 10:37 AM

Thanks for the advice zeroice