Working with HD footage

[rspaulding]

Hey guys, new poster here but I love reading through these forums!

Anyways, I have some questions about working with HD footage on a PC. I have used Premiere Pro CS3 and Pinnacle Studio Ultimate 12 and both programs seem to really have a hard time working with HD on my PC. And rendering each time you make a change to see how it looks just takes FOREVER!

Is there something I am not understanding here? Or do I just need a more powerful machine?

Specs:
HV30
Windows XP Pro 32bit
2.66ghz E6750 Core2Duo
4 gigs of DDR2 (xp only uses 3.5ghz)
GeForce 8800 GT 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express Graphics

[Eugenia Loli-Queru]

Your PC is plenty powerful for HDV, and even AVCHD. If you get slowness and no real time preview, then something else is wrong.

[Snazzy Flapper]

What about your hard drive? Lots of free space, and is it a fast 7200 RPM drive? If your machine supports SATA that is a faster bus than IDE.

[diffid]

Hey guys, new poster here but I love reading through these forums!

Anyways, I have some questions about working with HD footage on a PC. I have used Premiere Pro CS3 and Pinnacle Studio Ultimate 12 and both programs seem to really have a hard time working with HD on my PC. And rendering each time you make a change to see how it looks just takes FOREVER!

Is there something I am not understanding here? Or do I just need a more powerful machine?

Specs:
HV30
Windows XP Pro 32bit
2.66ghz E6750 Core2Duo
4 gigs of DDR2 (xp only uses 3.5ghz)
GeForce 8800 GT 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express Graphics

I'm new to all this so forgive me if I'm talking c--p but what about changing your software for something that doesn't keep re rendering your changes and just gives you a fast layered overlay, GPU accelerated, After Effects maybe? Perhaps work with proxies, not HD format until you are happy with your edits. Isn't one of the sins of shoddy NLE's the repeated rerendering of the footage degrading it multiple times?

I have Pinnacle Studio 12 Ultimate and I think it's absolute rubbish, buggy, unstable and horrid to work with. :-(

[CycleWriter]

I have Pinnacle Studio 12 Ultimate and I think it's absolute rubbish, buggy, unstable and horrid to work with. :-(

This opinion is shared by many.

[rspaulding]

This opinion is shared by many.

Yeah, I only used it for some AVCHD stuff cause Premiere wouldn't take it.

What about your hard drive?

500 gig external connected via e-SATA

but what about changing your software for something that doesn't keep re rendering your changes and just gives you a fast layered overlay, GPU accelerated, After Effects maybe? Perhaps work with proxies, not HD format until you are happy with your edits. Isn't one of the sins of shoddy NLE's the repeated rerendering of the footage degrading it multiple times?

Premiere Pro CS3 should be plenty fine, right? And Isn't After Effects more for effects and final-touch type things rather than sequencing/editing? Any other suggestions?

If you get slowness and no real time preview, then something else is wrong

It is very laggy in the preview unless I choose to render the video first. Even if I lower the preview quality it can be slow, especially if I start adding effects. Any ideas what could be wrong then?

[101001]

Is there something I am not understanding here?

Perhaps you have a lot of unneccessary processes running in the background?

I had similar enough issues. An extra hard disk for the project files or a RAID array for the project files works wonders.