M2TS conversion and playback slower than Molasses in January

[HighVoltageMiner]

I have been trying to edit m2ts files off of my camcorder. The process is extremely slow and uses 100% of my CPU which is a Dual Core AMD Athlon 2.7 ghz and only half of my available 4gb or RAM. I am running Windows Vista 64 op sys and the included Windows Live Movie Maker. I was using the onboard video card supplied with my motherboard until a friend suggested going to a better unit to help the CPU with the crunching. Unfortunately a new video card didn't help and it seems that it doesn't support M2TS files even during playback.

Asides from upgrading my CPU or decreasing the video size on my camcorder, are there any software fixes to my problem?

Thanks!

High Voltage Miner

[Soopafresh]

NeoScene. It'll make your footage easy to edit. I don't know if Movie Maker can import the resulting AVI files, you'll have to try it. NeoScene has a 3 day eval period.

Windows Movie Maker has it's share of instabilities. If you want a better editing package, Sony Vegas Studio Platinum is quite good and not very expensive.

[greymalkin]

what sort of quality hit do you take when converting your avchd to neoscene's intermediate format?

I know certain players like splash will playback my h.264 files flawlessly, but when trying to edit in something like adobe premiere it's worse than a slideshow (and the colors are much darker, but that's another topic).

Anyways..if anyone has used it that would be my question...