Am I doing something wrong??? I try to edit footage from Sony XR500V and on my computer I can preview it ONLY 12fps when I scale down the preview window to 480x270. It is ridiculous. I have pretty powerful computer four core Q9450 CPU and Nvidia 8900 640MB graphic card (which previews HD video with Magic Bullets in real time). I work on XP and Vegas 8.0c; Would it be beneficiary to upgrade to 8.1 or 9.0 and Vista???? or maybe Cineform would help?

Vegas Pro 9.0 handles AVCHD from my Sony HDR-CX12 a lot smoother than 8.0c did. You might want to download the trial and see if it helps on your PC. Preview is now multi-threaded in Vegas Pro 9.0 so if you have a quad-core you should get better preview speeds.

~jr

Marius, John's advice to try the trial of Vegas 9 is dead on. You can see how it handles and the installation won't hurt or interfere with Vegas 8, so you aren't risking anything.

John is an expert with Vegas and he is also extremely knowledgeable in matters of AVCHD, possibly moreso than many around these forums.

On the other hand, I know virtually nothing about AVCHD, so you can take what I have to say with a grain of salt.

I have found that with my PC configuration, however, that AVCHD files from my Panasonic HMC150 just don't like Vegas 9, or vice versa. I have found that the playback is significantly worse with the 64 bit version than the 32 bit version, and that Vegas 8 is much better than both versions of Vegas 9.

My computer is actually more powerful than yours. I have an i7 processor with tons of ram and my drives are 10K, so that shouldn't be an issue.

It is a strange thing, this upgrade. Some are finding it to work just fine, others not so much. I'm in the latter category, I'm sorry to say. The only way you'll find out is to try it and see what happens. Unfortunately there is no other way to find out.

I can't because I have XP not Vista

Ouch. Well you are in a bit of a pickle Marius.

This isn't the best time to upgrade to Vista since Windows 7 will be coming out this winter. I don't know what you should do.

You can try Neoscene free for 14 days. That would seem to be the obvious thing to try first.

I can't because I have XP not Vista

Why not? Vegas Pro 9 will run on XP.

Edward, I had assumed Vegas 9 would run on XP, but thought Marius knew something I didn't.

Well Marius there's nothing stopping you from Vegas 9.

wow, I was under impression since Vegas 8.1 will not run on XP then newer version (9.0) shouldn't either. I will try 9.0. Thanks all.

I have Vegas Pro 9-32 installed on this XP SP2 machine and it runs fine. I also have Vegas Pro 9-64 installed on a Vista 64 machine - also working fine. So no problems with using XP.

Vegas 8.1 is 64 bit. If you're running XP you will need to run Vegas 9 32 bit. It comes in both 64 bit and 32 bit versions. You just need to choose 32 bit version.

I installed 9.0 and WOW! it previews even in full resolution AVCHD 1920x1080 in REAL TIME; there is strange thing that at the begining of each file it starts with let's say 7-9fps and after 1-2 seconds goes in real time is this limitation of hard drive or cpu is buffering the file into memory????
BTW - I am testing new $1000 palm size baby from Sony HDR-XR500V. This camera is just amazing (it is hard to believe what difference one year could make in terms of new Exmor chip). Low light and stabilization is just incredible. I filmed rock concert from 500ft zooming in and HANDHELD!!!
See test : http://exposureroom.com/members/MarioB.aspx/assets/fe2588e8b8ec4bca8b78e74480eb16ee/

You may want to consider using Cineform as an intermediate codec for "ingesting" your AVCHD files. Both HDV and AVCHD files are not friendly on the timeline. From my experience, Cineform helps a great deal with editing both of these video formats. Cineform Neo Scene costs a bit more than $100.

Marius, I'm extremely jealous that its working for you so well.

I am even more jealous of that camera...wow that is gorgeous footage.

when I applied Magic Bullets it went down to 7-8 fps; is that CPU or graphic card responsible for preview???
btw - I rendered the same 21 sec.file to 1280x720 mp4 format and in Vegas 9 it took 50 sec. and in Vegas 8.0c 60 sec.

thanks to all of you for your help

Magic Bullet is hopeless, it is graphics card intensive I believe and there isn't much can be done that I have heard of.