What upgrades to capture/edit HD video?

[ninerfan]

Just purchased a Panasonic TM700K High Def Camcorder. I know it will be difficult (impossible?) to edit the 1080/60p footage with current software. I'm just wondering what I might need to do to upgrade my hardware as the budget and sales pricing allows. My current configuration is below;

AMD Phenom II Black Edition X4 955 CPU
ASUS M4A77TD Motherboard w/ Realtek 8112L LAN 10/100/1000 Mbps enabled
XFX GeForce 9800 GT 512Mb Video card
OCZ Stealth Stream Power Supply, OCZ700SXS, 700W
RAM: 2 each OCZ3G1600LVAM2G – 2 GB each
DDR3 PC3-8500U
Set at DDR3-1066 (7-7-7-16-4-26-8-4)
Hard Drives: 2 each Seagate Barracuda 1 TB, Sata 300, 7200rpm ST31000528AS Rev. CC37
Cooler Master CM690 Case
Audigy 2 Sound Card w/ firewire port
DVD-RW: Optiarc DVD RW Sata 150 AD-7240S
AverTVHD Volar Max ATSC TV Tuner
O/S: Windows 7 Ultimate, 64-bit
Monitors:
Acer AL2223W Monitor, 22” WS, 1680x1050 native resolution
Sharp LL-191A Monitor

Any advice where I would get best bang for the buck for high def. video editing?

Thanks,
Rick

 

[tecmo34]

Your current system is still pretty decent for video editing at 1080/60p footage... http://www.anandtech.com/bench/CPU/28 . To improve upon your current system, your best bang for the buck would be to upgrade to a Phenom II X6 (1055T or 1090T (my recommendation)) CPU after flashing your BIOS to 2005 or higher. Your other option would be going with the Intel Core i7-930 but you are talking almost a completely new system.

Your other components still meet the requirements for HD video editing. After the CPU upgrade, you can look to add a SSD down the road to complete the upgrade.

 

[WR2]

Your hardware is in good shape (with possible exception of your monitor).
All you really need is some decent software (all are less than $100):
Pinnacle Studio Ultimate 14
Adobe Premiere Elements 8
Vegas Movie Studio HD Platinum

 

[tecmo34]

I like Pinnacle Studio Ultimate 14... I have it for my system

 

[PLATTERMAN]

Nero 9 or 10 is a good editing package, to capture stills as well. 2 plug-in options for at least version 9 are the dts & the Blu ray authoring plug- ins. A 1920 x 1200 monitor works well, SlySoft may come in handy as well.

 

[ninerfan]

Thanks folks. I've heard editing 1080/60p footage is just about impossible by current software standards. For now, I can shoot in 1080/60p (archival) but then downconvert into AVCHD for editing [The 1080p60 mode is AVCHD except the bitrate (28Mbps) is higher than the AVCHD spec allows (17 Mbps for main profile, 24Mbps for high profile)] It seems like my hardware will handle it but need to wait for editing software that can deal with it.

 

[ninerfan]

Best answer selected by ninerfan.