CPU requirements for HD editing

[Chris Ames]

Originally Posted by Enea Lanzarone

Things you could do to improve performance (no guarantee, but at least you can try):

- make sure you use the latest drivers for your graphics chip (in your case that would be the ATI Catalyst Drivers). Also, make sure your system is set up to use maximum hardware acceleration.
- defrag your harddisk
- this one may be the most important: use a different player for your m2t files. You could download Media Player Classic (looks like an old Windows Media Player), which is configureable in almost any way. Especially you can choose the decoding method (hardware overlay, software only etc.). Tweak the settings and see if you can make your m2t files run smoothly. Another alternative is VLC media player, which handles HDV files nicely as well.

Good luck, I'm sure you can sort it out!

Thanks for your help! I haven't updated my video drivers in a while. I shall do that.

[Luc Fender]

Originally Posted by Chris Ames

Thanks for your help! I haven't updated my video drivers in a while. I shall do that.

One way I get decent perf with moviemaker/Ulead is that the edit window is small (in moviemaker you can also adjust the size so you find the sweet spot if there's one). Of course you don't see much detail but for deleting scenes it's good enough.

I certainly would try moviemaker since it's lightweight and sure not much functionality, but could be performant enough on a slower system.

On a notebook I did have a utility to fix the 'speedstep' to 16 and that certainly made a difference watching HD movies (can't remember name of that freeware program).