G'day guys,

I finally ordered Premiere Pro 2, and will be here within the week. I also bought a 250 Gig external drive, and I own an FX1...

I have one of the latest Computers, ready and waiting at home, its only 3 months old, all geared for gaming and editing (I have to share it with my brother.)

I think I'm set, but someone mentioned something about when Importing HDV, I get M2T (or such) files and not .AVI and I have to get hold of software to be able to use this.... I'm assuming Prem Pro can do this for me yes? I'm a little worried, cause I exhausted my budget and can't afford to get my hands on anything else...

thanks muchly

Not a Premiere user but I have found that converting M2T to a much forgiving file outside your editing platform is way better and more efficient.

PPro 2.0 Natively loads M2T files.

Leo:

Assuming your system is up to it, you can edit .m2t files in PPro 2.0. You should have a least 2 gig of memory, and a lot of people are running dual processors. I use the the AMD Dual 3800+ chip on a very generic ECS board.

What you will see people recommending is using Cineform's Aspect HD with Premiere Pro 2.0. It is supposed to give superior editing, at near realtime. It will actually capture in a Cineform "intermediate" file that is 4.5 to 5 times the size of the corresponding .m2t file. You will get superior editing and speed in the editing process. There is a free 15 trial available at the Cineform website for you to try. Price is an issue- $499.00 US.

There is a Capture only version called HD Connect for $199.00 US that allows use of the Cineform capture program, and the codec. I assume it allows editing in Premiere Pro 2.0, but you will not get the real time editing and special editing plug ins associated with Aspect. That is also available in a trial version.

You will need a lot of disk space.

Another utility you might want to try if you are going to edit in native hdv, is HDVSplit. It is a freeware or shareware program. Neither Vegas or PPro have scene detection in their HDV capture utilities, and HDVSplit does. Check it out, but watch for dropouts with it.

Another advantage of using the cineform codec is that you can get away with using a computer that is well below spec and still edit the cineform avi files.

Thanks for the replies guys. I'd love to get my hands on cineform, but since I cant afford anything at the moment, I will have to just use m2t files in PP 2.

I've got A dual processors, P4 3.2gHrtz but my RAM is only 1gig... I'll hope that would be enough... Prem Pro will be arriving very soon I hope, and I really cant afford a new RAM chipset for 500 bucks, or the Cineform program for the same.... This hurts... :(

Thanks anyways for the advice, I think I'll just attempt dealing with m2t files via Premiere and hope for the best.