Topic: Editing AVCHD video - programs and CPU requirements

[fanofthemule]

What is everyone using to edit AVCHD video?  I'm working on putting together a computer that will be dedicated to editing video and know the HD / AVCHD formats need some pretty good juice to properly process.

[liveween]

What is everyone using to edit AVCHD video?  I'm working on putting together a computer that will be dedicated to editing video and know the HD / AVCHD formats need some pretty good juice to properly process.

Are you planning on a PC or MAC build?


- kobi.
liveween.com
WEENTV

[guysonic]

I'm using very modest dual 1.6 GHz CPU WIN Vista 32 bit PC, 5400 Rpm WD/Seagate Sata drives, and Cyberlink's PowerDirector 8 editor.  Works well, but seems slow for some AVCHD endering functions

[coloartist]

My desktop is:

Intel Core I7  920@2.67ghz
6.0 gb Ram
64bit operating system

I have been capturing with Adobe Premier Pro, and Editing in Sony Vegas 9. Premier pro doesn't seem to have the problem of splitting up my footage in to separate non-seemless clips. Vegas seems more user friendly to me.

[fanofthemule]

What is everyone using to edit AVCHD video?  I'm working on putting together a computer that will be dedicated to editing video and know the HD / AVCHD formats need some pretty good juice to properly process.

Are you planning on a PC or MAC build?


- kobi.
liveween.com
WEENTV

PC

[beatkilla]

For avchd you will need at the very least a quad core amd phenom 2.5 ghz or higher with a 64 bit operating syrtem with at least 4gb of ram.I would recommend 8gb of ram .OR core i7 processor with 64bit OS and 8gb of ram.

[rastasean]

For avchd you will need at the very least a quad core amd phenom 2.5 ghz or higher with a 64 bit operating syrtem with at least 4gb of ram.I would recommend 8gb of ram .OR core i7 processor with 64bit OS and 8gb of ram.

thats an awful lot of processing power. guysonic has far less than that and processes videos without issues, according to him.

[coloartist]

For avchd you will need at the very least a quad core amd phenom 2.5 ghz or higher with a 64 bit operating syrtem with at least 4gb of ram.I would recommend 8gb of ram .OR core i7 processor with 64bit OS and 8gb of ram.

thats an awful lot of processing power. guysonic has far less than that and processes videos without issues, according to him.

Less processing power will work, but if you are building a new computer, why would you want to build it with less processing power?

[fanofthemule]

For avchd you will need at the very least a quad core amd phenom 2.5 ghz or higher with a 64 bit operating syrtem with at least 4gb of ram.I would recommend 8gb of ram .OR core i7 processor with 64bit OS and 8gb of ram.

do i need to worry about the integrated vs dedicated video card?  i plan to use this cpu for video only so there won't be any other programs on it other than my editing stuff

 

[coloartist]

I would go with a dedicated video card. In fact I installed two video cards that split the work. A friend of mine builds computers. I can't really explain how it works.

[beatkilla]

Im using a  Nvidia geforce 9600 with 768mb dedicated memory.You wont need more than 1gb.Dedicated video memory means that percentage of your ram is tied to your video card and cant be used for anything else like rendering etc.  And to the other poster avchd comes in different bitrates from 4mbps to 24mbps and i can assure you that to do any high profile avchd multicam editing with 1 or more avchd streams to get anyhere close to 29.97fps you need to meet those specs.Can you work with avchd on a less powerful computer? Yes...but not with full frame rate and surely not with 2 or more cams an hour or more in length.Trust me ive tried it on core 2 duo 2.0ghz with 2gb ram gets about 4fps with 1 cam in draft auto mode.Now drop in a few 24bit audio sources and some color correction...

[guysonic]

I should add my very modest dual 1.6 GHhz system desribed below has only 3 GIG ram (max for the 32 bit OS), but does have a very inexpensive (<$50 usd) .5 GIG 8600GT NVidia capable video card with CUDA processing ability helping to handle some intensive rendering tasks.

[BlackLab]

Intel Core I7  920@2.67ghz
16.0 gb Ram
64bit operating system

needless to say I have no issues but rendering isnt the issue - its whether you can playback raw files in real time.
I'd go Quad core too

[phanophish]

I'll chime in.

As for the minimum, like others have said anything you buy new can handle it, but might take ages to render.  BUT, if you are looking at doing things like multi cam video then the system demands can go up very fast.


AVCHD uses h264 for the video compression which is a motion compensation based codec.  So to render a given frame properly it has to refrence all frames since the last keyframe.  This means lots of disk read when you are jumping around within 4 concurrent AVCHD streams  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_compensation

My experience was a core i7-920 (Quad, Multi threaded- 8 total threads) , Windows 7 64bit, 8GB of RAM and dedicated video were not enough at times.  The big issue for me was disk subsystem performance with multicam AVCHD playback.  I was running a single SATA3, 2TB 7200 RPM drive and it was NOT enough.  The challenge with AVCHD is, it is a efficient recording CODEC, but not great for the random access to the video stream that editing demands.  Frequently when doing a 4 cam video my system would just stop responding when I would cue to another point on the Vegas multicam track.  I ended up picking up and converting the entire source video to Cineform and that largely resolved my issues, but disk performance could still be an issue at times even using the purpose built Cineform codec.  Dedicated video is not a huge deal even the cheapest dedicated video cards naively accelerate h264 these days.  Spending more only improves 3D graphics performance which is mainly for gaming.

[Chaosu]

I should add my very modest dual 1.6 GHhz system desribed below has only 3 GIG ram (max for the 32 bit OS), but does have a very inexpensive (<$50 usd) .5 GIG 8600GT NVidia capable video card with CUDA processing ability helping to handle some intensive rendering tasks.

That's why I would recommend nVidia graphic card (with CUDA technology). It helps, I myelf have ATI but you will find one that fits you in any price range from both companies so why not choose the one that is designed to handle video processing.