Editing AVCHD with this computer - Possible or not?

[v1ru5]

My friend is selling this computer to me for 700 euros...

CPU: AMD Phenom II 955 Black Edition 3,2Ghz AM3
Motherboard: Asus M4A79-T Deluxe 790FX AM3
RAM: 4Gb Kingston 1600Mhz DDR3
GPU: Radeon HD4870 512Mb
HD: Samsung F1 500Gb Sata2
Power: Seasonic 430W
Screen: Samsung 2494HM

Will this have enough torque to edit AVCHD (17mbps quality) and can I choose any program to edit with, or will the hardware limit the choice somehow?

Can this only do basic editing, or can it stretch into more advanced stuff with effects and stuff?

Does the machine have enough of everything and do you think the price is right?

What do you think is the most performance-limiting part of the package - what is the "bottleneck"?

[olyteddy]

The bottleneck could be the single hard drive. You ought to use separate drives for the video and programs.

[fritzi93]

The computer listed is capable of basic editing (cutting, essentially) of AVCHD. As mentioned, you could really use extra drives, but the problem with editing AVCHD isn't hardware, it's the characteristics of the compression itself.

When you mention effects, etc., I suspect aren't aware of what this entails. AVCHD is highly compressed and a bastard to cut accurately. Effects? No, for AVCHD files you should first capture/recompress to an intermediate lossless codec if you want to do anything fancy. If the destination format is AVCHD, encode to that after all editing is done. Which is time-consuming, (as in CPU-intensive) on even the fastest machines. JMHO.

[mL999]

hello viru .
Your machine spec is more than powerful enough. The advantage of using two hard drives is to save time moving drive heads from one part of a disc to an other. You take the source file(s) from one drive and render the project (save) it to the other. ( This also saves time if you are using a video converter.) Two drives are not really necessary but the techinque saves time. Similary, processing power speeds the work up but I used to edit HD sucessfully with a mediun spec machine.
Here is an extract from my comments on another thread (what edit soft for an old machine)
I have used Vegas successfully with a similar spec. pc to yours. Download the Vegas Movie Studio Pro trial and try it.
With an earlier version I had to use a converter first because it would not accept the m2ts.
I do not use capture software. My camera saves onto an SD card . I copy the files directly from that into the computer using a card reader
You do not need an ultra high specification processor for editing although it would be quicker. Probably additional RAM would help to speed up the rendering but I do not know by how much, Drinking coffee and reading a book also helps at this stage. Keep your editing source files on one drive and the rendered 'save to' file on the other drive. This should save time moving the drive heads.
....cheers mike