Help! Need advise about AVCHD on Adobe Premiere Pro & Core 2

[rpelements]

I have a Dell Precision M65 Core 2 Duo 2.00Ghz 2GB RAM laptop, installed Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 trial to test the video footage recorded on a demo onto my own SD from a new Canon Vixia HF S10 camcorder at the lowest 5MB setting of the AVCHD video footage and the editing is choppy big time, can't really test anything out, editing, previewing, etc..

Any suggestions? I thought my laptop would be certainly good enough, so just yesterday I decided to double the ram to 4GB which is arriving later this week, do you think that could do it? I hear a lot of people have success jumping from 2GB to 3GB on their computers for AVCHD video editing, perhaps I could be on of these candidates?

Any advice, suggestions on this? I hope I don't need a new laptop that has Quad Core, I don't want to permanently melt my lap & break my budget!

[Chuck Engels]

Quad Core is really a requirement for editing HDV, especially AVCHD.
Your core 2 duo is a nice laptop but not quite enough to edit those files without some issues.

You can try shutting off all unnecessary processes, that should help some.
I have the exact same laptop and it is great for editing SD video, but not so hot on HDV.

[John 'twosheds' McDonald]

There is a useful program called "Enditall" which will close down all unnecessary tasks for you. You should be able to find it via Google.

[Bill Hunt]

I highly recommend EndItAll2, and use it on all of my computers. IIRC, it has now gone to shareware, where it was freeware for many years. Even as shareware, it's proved its worth to me.

I never enter into a Project, that I do not first close down all unnecessary program.

Hunt

[rpelements]

EndItAll2 is the newest version of enditall?

So do you think it's possible to do it with this and then the new 4GB of ram that is coming on this Core 2 Duo? I really hope so, I need to buy this camcorder in the next week and just cannot find myself buying and old SD camcorder..

[Chuck Engels]

It would edit M2T files from a HV20, 30 or 40 better and easier than AVCHD files.
I recommend the DV Tape camcorders if you don't have a quad core processor.
At least you can downconvert and edit in SD if things don't work out trying to edit HDV.
But I'm sure you find that editing the HDV files from a HV40 will be much easier on your system

[rpelements]

So you are suggesting perhaps downconverting all of the AVCHD files I get? Those downconverted files will go to what new format? I presume that new format would be better quality than the DV Tape Standard Definition anyways right?

[Chuck Engels]

No, I was suggesting downconverting the M2T files from A DV Tape HDV camcorder like the HV40.