proxy or intermediate for avchd

[codemaster]

I noticed that most HD consumer camcorders are using the AVCHD format. I wish there were consumer HD camcorders that use a much more editing friendly format than AVCHD, with much higher bitrate, but it seems that all consumer video cameras are using highly compressed finishing formats (H.264, AC3). I assume this can cause problems for those few people that also want to edit their recordings.

Vegas has native editing support for AVCHD. But without a newer GPU and a newer version of Vegas, the CPU will have to decode the highly compressed 1080p/i H.264 video, and also render the transitions, and other effects applied. But because the CPU is not able to render this in real time for preview, I heard there are two alternatives:

- the use of proxy SD files; for example, converting the 1080p/i AVCHD to SD MPEG2 that Vegas also has native editing support for, then edit with the SD files, and finally replace the SD files with the original AVCHD files;

- the use of some sort of intermediate files, for example, converting the AVCHD files to something more editing friendly, and with much lower compression.

Wich method is better ? Or are there better methods than these two ?

[budwzr]

The better method is to get a faster computer.