How to view clips of sony HDR-SR12 using Vista MC?

SR12 records in AVCHD format, and you really need a fairly fast computer to play it smoothly. People have had success using CoreAVC to play the video, and you can give it a try.

If you have a video card (or chipset) capable of hardware accelerated h.264 decoding, then you don't really need a fast computer. I have an AMD780 motherboard with a very low end XP4000+ CPU as my HTPC, and it plays all my clips very well.

This might not be helpful, but I'll throw it out there anyway... I had the same problem, so I switched to MediaPortal -- it's a free open-source media center that's way more powerful (and less restrictive) than MC. You can easily get it to do everything that MC does, and then about twice as much more .

You might've heard of it and don't want to use it, in which case I realize this isn't helpful as it isn't solving your problem... but in case you didn't know about it -- give it a shot, I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.

Edit: I guess I didn't specifically say it... but MediaPortal will play any file format you can play on your PC, including your SR12 clips.

After trying a different variety of arrangements and codecs/filters, I've come to the conclusion that Sony's Picture Motion Browser is the easiest, best (and most obvious) solution.

Sony also provides "Player for AVCHD" which will play any files on the SR11/12 HDD.