Editing HD camcorder footage on older computer?
 

I have a SONY HD camcorder that produces .mts files (AVCHD). As expected, my medium-range PC is struggling to edit that video. Playback is jerky, scrubbing, seeking is extremely slow, it has become a nightmare to edit the video. All are 50i.

I read on several sites that we can export the HD files to lossless and edit with ease. My goal is to edit out unwanted footage, and possibly make DVDs. (I know it will reduce quality going HD to SD, but I will be retaining the footage in HD as a separate copy)

If I export the HD files with lossless, will my machine be able to edit it with as much ease as it does with DV AVI files?

If yes, which lossless format is suggested? Huffyuv? Do I need to take care of any settings while exporting to Huffyuv, given that they are High Definition files?

I also read about Cineform Digital Intermediate codec (now made free). Is it good for this purpose? Is it as lossless as Huffyuv?

Thanks.

Intermediate codecs can improve the editing experience at the cost of transcoding time.
And so can use of proix files if the NLE supports that.
Look for intermediate formats your NLE likes.
What software do you intend to use for editing and authoring?
(Some NLEs support AVCHD nicely, even on 4-5 year old PCs.)
What are you PC specs (ram, processor, storage, etc.)
How many simultaneous AVCHD streams do you plan to edit?
Do you plan to use a lot of effects, filters, and transitions, or just simple cuts?
And most important, what is you budget for additional software and gear?

Lossless HD is huge. The problem then switches from CPU and RAM to disk I/O. So all you're really doing here is trading one error for another. Go ahead and try it, but it may not be as lovely an experience as you've read about.

I have an i7 Mac Mini with 16gb RAM and a 7200rpm HDD, and I have to use it for HD work (ProRes422). Even then it's not as quick as editing SD was. I'd not even attempt editing on any of the older Windows system that I have. HD has all kinds of overhead, and there's honestly no way to avoid it. It's as slow on modern hardware as MPEG-2 editing/encoding was in 2001 when I got a shiny new P4.

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