Are there any avchd gurus around?

[nkrause]

We recently bought the canon hf100 and my PC is too old to even attempt editing the avchd footage. I do not do any tinkering with computers so upgrading is not being considered and the kids will use my current machine. I need to buy a new computer and the research process has consumed me the last few weeks. We all know the great stories mac users have to say about their macs. However, after researching macs I see that apple software transcodes to AIC and there are some who insist that hd quality is degraded during this process and some that insist it is not. In the pc world, there are many editing options and according to the forums, there are a lot of bad experiences for pcs as well.

So, I am hoping to make a decision this weekend after getting some feedback from users that are having good experiences editing avchd on macs and pcs. If you are out there, can you provide your real life experiences and specifically try to explain your thoughts on pros and cons of PC vs Mac for what I want to do buy using your real life experience with your workflow.
If I go the pc route I would probably buy the new i7 2.66 (dell) or at least a 2.66 quad core (HP) with at least 4GB of RAM and a decent video card. If I go the mac route I would probably get the iMac 20 or 24 with at least 2.66 processor. Would either of these pc / mac configurations allow me to accomplish these things:

1. record at highest quality
2. easily transfer avchd footage to computer
3. I currently feel the need to permanently save my raw avchd footage but this may not be necessary.
4. edit by adding fades, effects, music, menus and titles
5. burn to standard dvd in SD for friends and burn to standard dvd in hd for my PS3. I do think I will get a bluray burner in the future.
6. I have days of raw old family footage on DVD from my old hi8 and minidvd camcorder that I would like to edit and possibly merge with the new avchd footage.

I would of course like to do all of this efficiently and with no crashes…I realize no crashes is wishful thinking but the fewer crashes the better.
If you are a pc user, what software do you use and what version of that software?
Does the video card have a big impact on stability and efficiency? I think one of the editors is optimized with nvidia cuda technology?
Are there any all-in-ones by dell or hp that can handle avchd editing?
Is Mac or PC better for what I want to do?

[Paul LS]

Either quad core will do all the things on your list apart from your point 5. PE7 will not burn HD to a standard DVD. For this I export from PE7 and bring into Corel DVD Moviefactory 6+.

The graphic card is not so critical... PE7 does not use it to help speed rendering. However if you play AVCHD or Blu-ray on your computer via software player then the graphic cards GPU can be used to take the load of the computers processor. I use Cyberlink PowerDVD as a player and it uses the GPU on an ATI or Nvida graphics card.

[Paul LS]

I believe Premiere Pro CS4 can use the Nvidia Cuda technology to accelerate AVCHD rendering, hopefully PE8 will. Currently I think Cyberlink PowerDirector and Pinnacle can also use the Cuda technology.

I find PE7 to be quite stable, increasing the RAM to 4GB certainly helped. Cant comment on the MACs I am afraid.

[nkrause]

Paul, do you have any experience with the newest releases from Vegas or powerdirector? Thanks for your responses!

[Paul LS]

I have not tried PowerDirector as I read it has a bug in AVCHD smart rendering... smart rendering is where, when you export a clip that you have not edited, it will be exported without re-rendering... thus saving quality.

I currently use Sony Vegas Pro 8, there is also the Studio version of Vegas that I have not tried. I find Vegas quite stable and the editing "experience" is similar to PE7... in terms of performance. Both work well with my Q6600 quad core with 4 Gb of RAM. I am more familiar with PE7, the way things are "done" is different in Vegas and I find PE7 more intuitive. Having said that Vegas Pro is quite powerful and I am slowly mastering it.

As I said, for viewing I burn AVCHD (exported from PE7 or Vegas) to standard DVD along with menus using Corel DVD Moviefactory. i then view on my HDTV from my home theatre PC which has an ATI graphics card with HDMI connection for the audio and video. I use Cyberlink PowerDVD as a software player.

[nkrause]

From your experience working with windows apps and avchd is the hd degradation noticeable to the human eye. If I record at 1920 X 1080 at 60i on my hf100, can i edit and then burn hd to standard dvd and not be able to see a difference in the quality between the original footage and the dvd version? I have concluded from apple users that apple's process and tools degradate the original footage after transcoding, editing and burning so that the human eye can notice the degradation.

[Paul LS]

I assume here you are talking of a strictly high definition workflow, so, from import to burning HD to a standard DVD.

The only way to get no degradation when burning to AVCHD high definition discs is to use a video editor with AVCHD smart-rendering. So Corel VideoStudio, PowerDirector or Pinnacle, these will not render non-edited video (although they all have some reported bugs in AVCHD smart-rendering). As soon as you add an effect or transition the video will be re-rendered on export and you will get some quality loss. I use PE7 and Sony Vegas and I generally do some colour correction on the clips,the export rendered clips are very good quality... it is difficult to see a degradation compared to the original footage. I then smart-burn them to standard DVD... so no quality loss there. So basically I think one generation of rendering gives very good results. If you render a couple of times then the quality will soon drop off.