High Definition: Redux

Yesterday I more or less went off about a couple of items from December Issue of PCWORLD. I re-read the article last night. I was hoping that my initial impression would be softened a bit. Alas, I was disappointed. The first issue comes within the first column of the article on the first page.

You can edit HDV content on a computer with a modest 2-GHz Intel Pentium CPU and 2GB of RAM, and you can use more video editing applications (including Microsoft Windows Movie Maker HD and Apple iMovie). But the power required for AVCHD typically starts with a 2.66-GHz Intel Core 2 Quad system.

The main issue comes from the last line, in bold. This is total horse crap! I have edited and rendered video files and DVDs that started with the output AVCHD files from my SR-12 on both of my laptops. Granted, they are newer so they are both Core 2 Duo cpus. One is a 2.0-GHz with 2GB of RAM and the other is a 2.4-GHz with 3GB of RAM. I had no issues and I got what I expected to be reasonable render times. I am willing to bet that my old HP laptop would have been up to the task just fine. It was a 3.0-Ghz P4 Northwood with 2GB of ram. A system that if I had it today would be 4+ years old. I will give the author that HDV can likely be edited with more applications out of the box than AVCHD can, but I don’t consider this a drawback at all. Movie Maker and iMovie are “nice” but they are very basic to begin with.