Hello, I am about to edit videos done with my Canon HF 200
camera. My older PC just died with the CPU fan broken.
I am going to replace it but still I am wondering what
are recommendations for a newer PC.
NVIDIA graphics card, lots of memory (>4GB) fast hard disk.
I am not looking for a gaming machine, just that I will
be comfortably to edit AVCHD videos for the next couple
of years.
Currently there is a Packard-Bell thing on offer coming
with Intel core i5-750 and Nvidia GT230 but only 3 GB
memory. Price tag is 800 Euros.
Other than the memory, this could be a good offer,
but I probably would like to assemble the box myself to select
a good case and silent fans.
It shouldnt be more expensive than that, somewhat less
would be fine.

Thomas

I edit, transcoding HF100 mts files to DNxHD, on a dual core Athlon 64 with an Nvidia 9400 card. Ubuntu Jaunty 64. Anything less than this and I think HD editing would be jerky and slow. As it is the DNxHD files drop some frames but playback in realtime in the timeline project window. Seeking-scrubbing works fine and is frame accurate. It was okay with 2 GB of RAM, but now I have 6 GB.

With VDPAU drivers I can watch 1080p h264 results nicely with mplayer.

The only problem is rendering. Rendering a 20 minute video to H264 takes 4-6 hours typically. A quad core would be twice as fast. I usually set up a render overnight, but if I notice an error and want a quick redo, it kind of sucks. Of course to really speed this stuff up to a non-painful level I would need a 12 core machine or something, or video card rendering API - future tech.

I have a Canon Legria HF S10 AVCHD camcorder. My main PC for editing is an Intel Core i7 920 w/6GB RAM with a nVidia GTX260. Its a bit over kill. I can also edit on my two older PCs (a 32-bit Athlon-2800 w/2GB RAM with a nVidia 8400GS, and also a 32-bit Athlon-1100 w/1GB RAM with a nVidia FX5200.

For all 3 PCs, I typically reduce the videos from 1920x1080 @ 25MB/sec to 1280x720 @ 8MB/sec prior to editing. While the Intel Core i7 PC is nice for for editing I still try to keep my final video clips under around 15 minutes in size. On my 32-bit athlon-2800, I try to keep the final clip under 8 minutes, and under my 32-bit athlon-1100 it try to keep the final clip 4 minutes max. Once one goes above those sizes, the probability of a crash increases. The 32-bit Athlon-1100 is slow, and I don't recommend it to anyone as an editing machine. :) ... (although it does function). :)