Newbie - Adobe Premiere/Computer Horsepower

[rgibson]

Hi, I'm a newbie to video editing and I'm having some problems. Hopefully someone can point me in the right direction. My wife bought me a Panasonic HDC-HS250 hidef camcorder about a year ago and I've just been copying the .mts files over to a hard drive and viewing them in Windows Media player as needed.
Last week I installed Adobe Premiere and went through some online tutorials on how to get started cutting and splicing. When I load the videos into Premiere and play them they are a little jittery and garbled. When I play back the final output in the other window it's even worse. The videos play fine in Windows Media Player. Is this just a case of my computer being under powered to deal with these files. I've read that you need quite a bit of horse power to deal with these mts files.

My computer config is..
Windows 7 x64, Intel Core 2 Quad Q9400 @2.66GHz., 8GB RAM
1st. hard drive - Seagate ST3500418AS 500GB SATA 7200 RPM
2nd. hard drive - Seagate ST31000340SV 1TB SATA 7200 RPM

Thanks
Rob

[edDV]

Windows Media player is probably using DirectShow hardware decode to play the file.

Which version of Adobe Premiere?

What project settings?

Did you try to export?

If you export to Blu-Ray standard MPeg2 or h.264 it will probably play in WMP or MPCHC with hardware decode.

[rgibson]

Thanks for the quick reply. I'm using CS4. I believe the project is set to HDV 1080i30.
I did export it but I don't remember what settings I used and I deleted the file as it was garbled as well.

[edDV]

An HDV project will require import AVCHD (h.264) video to recode before a preview is possible.

That said your CPU should play fine after you render the timeline.

Did you render the timeline?

I've haven't been a user of AVCHD to CS4 so others should comment. I have done HDV to CS4 successfully.

[rgibson]

Ok, I'm not sure what your first line means "import video to recode before a preview is possible".
I didn't render anything. How and at what point do I do that?

[poisondeathray]

What he's saying is your sequence settings don't match, so you get "red render bar" , which means it has to convert to RGB and render everything - this means it everything is slower and bogged down

Use a matching sequence preset to whatever you shot, it should be "AVCHD" something (not "HDV", because your camera doesn't shoot HDV). It should be labelled something like "AVCHD 1080i60" if you shot interlaced

Also , do you have the media separate from the system/application drive (is it on the 2nd drive) ?

[aedipuss]

like pdr said your cam shoots avchd mpeg-4 and HDV is mpeg-2. and if you shoot 1920x1080 even the frame size is wrong as HDV is 1440x1080.

[edDV]

Ok, I'm not sure what your first line means "import video to recode before a preview is possible".
I didn't render anything. How and at what point do I do that?

That is why it didn't play. Permiere requires you render the timeline for preview.

I'm unfamiliar with current Premiere timeline renders. Last I used it you still needed to render the timeline to get a preview.

This shouldn't affect the final encode.

I blame AVCHD more than Adobe because they are pushing a geek format on the Best Buy clueless.

The AVCHD advocates will say their target customers never edit.

Who am I to say despite statistics, some might.

[rgibson]

@poisondeathray yes the media is on the second drive.
Thanks everyone. I'm going to start a new project and play some more.