Hi,

Just wondering if you guys could give me a quick opinion if my computer is fast enough.

I bought a Dell 510 in July 2006. Specs below:

Pentium D 930 Dual Core (3.0GHz 800FSB)
2GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 533MHz
128MB PCI-E ATI Radeon X300 SE

I'm pretty sure it's not fast enough. Would I be okay if I got a faster video card? Or would I be better off just getting a new computer?

Thanks!

You could download sample .mts files and also Sony Vegas Pro or Platinum trial versions and see how your pc handles it.

http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/download/trials/moviestudiope

http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/download/trials/vegaspro

Just wondering if you guys could give me a quick opinion if my computer is fast enough.

I bought a Dell 510 in July 2006. Specs below:

Pentium D 930 Dual Core (3.0GHz 800FSB)
2GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 533MHz
128MB PCI-E ATI Radeon X300 SE It depends if you wish to edit it AND play it back before editing , or just edit it ...

I know that may sound strange, but I can edit many of the AVCHD raw .mts files from most video cameras with an old athlon-1100, with 1GB of RAM, and a primitive nVidia MX440 graphic card under openSUSE-11.1 Linux with the application KDEnlive. BUT I can not play the raw videos without jerking and stuttering on that PC. After editing, and rendering to a lower resolution, I am then able to play the rendered version.

Now the rendering time is excruciating slow, so I prefer my somewhat newer athlon-2800 with 2GB of RAM and a nvidia FX5200 (still old by your dual core PC's standard), which is about 3x faster. Or better yet my Dell Studio 15 laptop Core2 duo P8400 with 4GB RAM and a Radeon HD3450 (which is about 9x faster). ... Only the Dell Studio 15 can play most video formats with out stuttering (with the application ffplay), ... but even on it, some of the raw formats I encountered will stutter when played back. But editing works fine with kdenlive on all 3 PCs ... age is not a factor in that case for rendering functionality (only a factor for speed) !

But I think it really depends on what you are trying to do.

I'm pretty sure it's not fast enough. Would I be okay if I got a faster video card? Or would I be better off just getting a new computer?I'm thinking of purchasing an Intel Core i7 based PC, possibly with a nVidia 9800GT (to take advantage of vdpau under Linux).

But Linux is definitely NOT for everyone.

The Windows users will need to chime in wrt the Windows software application limitations.

Thanks for the great info. I'll try and download the trial version and the sample when I get home.

I'm looking at editing and playing before making the final copy if that makes sense. And I'm more of a windows guy, haven't messed around with LINUX; and I haven't used a MAC since I was in Middle School... many years ago!

I have an almost identical PC to you and I can tell you that editing AVCHD is not a fast process. It's certainly possible, but not fast. I get the sense from these treads that until quad core with compatible software that can use all 4 cores is out, this process will continue to take a while.

Anyone feel free to correct me if i'm wrong.