Let's talk AVCHD

zr_media, That non-moving "crystal cylinder" type of storage media you referred to has been used in computers and electronic equipment for years.
They are made of silicon and called SSI, MSI, LSI, CPU's and so on. Go to this site http://crucial.com/support/manufacturing.aspx but you may find the reading a bit boring.

JoLin,
Alot depends on the speed of ones computer such as CPU's and the amount of memory they have. Some bought software/hardware but didn't pay any attention to the minimum requirements to run it on their computers.

Is AVCHD acceptable for stock, and if so, what camera would you recommend? My sister-in-law wants to try, but doesn't like the miniDV tapes...

Hi Jason
You are correct :)
My computer has 2 gig of memory and xp sp2 , for vegas 8 Pro is enough and works well, but for the Pinacle 12 titaniun is clearly insufficient., I am now preparing a new computer much faster.

FD

Hi dapoopta
"Is AVCHD acceptable for stock," ... I say that yes although I prefer using my sony EX1 xdcam... it's another animal :) keep in mind with good light cameras are almost all good, the good light is very very important.
When I travel light to use sony hdr sr7 AVCHD, you can see in my gallery many clips made with this camera. and I have such nice clips in situations where the light is not good, but using the manual mode this camera to have been some miracles :)
Sorry the english is not my native language.

FD

An update: My friend let me borrow his HS9 before he took it back to see if I could figure out a way to edit the footage from the camera. Last night I figured it out. The usable videos were in a deep folder called "Stream" that I hadn't looked in before. My computer still didn't recognize them as playable media, but the demo version of Pinnacle Studio 12 Ultimate did (without crashing, I might add). The videos came in as h.264. I exported them as MJPEG-compressed individual frames and they look gorgeous. I've changed my mind about that Panasonic and AVCHD in general. Now all I have to do is go get a camera myself (not the HS9, it's too "consumer") along with a terabyte hard drive so I can export these files as uncompressed AVIs before converting them to MOVs. I tried this with the first imported clip, but the output was going to be over 200 gigabytes. So be aware, people, not only do you need a pumped-up processor(s) and plenty of ram, you also need a huge dedicated hard drive. I'll let you folks know when I upload my first from-AVCHD clips so you can check out the quality.

Dapoopta,
Tell your sister-in-law that we're all full up. I don't need more competition. :-)

Jake

Hahaha you are right. WHAT AM I THINKING ! Jake... I need to paypal you my earnings, that is how smart you are :).

zr_media... I'd like to see some of your results. Are you submitting just here or to other sites too? I wonder if others are a little more strict then the good ol p5

zr_media,

You plentyof that non-moving "crystal cylinder" type of media storage. LOL!!!

Been running Adobe CS3 production suite. My PC for the last three years is a duo core 3.0 4 mb ram. It really is more than needed for Premier Pro CS3. Very little slowdown and processes real time. When I bought the PC it was state of art three years ago and still is faster than almost all PC being sold today. The quad core with more than 4mb ram should scream through video processing.