[Dave Sung]

So I noticed how my clips would start up smoothly and then start to get choppy as the cpu usage went up and it would stay at 100%. This caused me to think that the cpu was the issue. I checked the cs4 manual and it said the minimum cpu requirements to edit HD is a 2.8Ghz dual core. You might think well as long as I have more cores at a slower speed it should compensate. But more cores cannot not make up for the speed needed. I don’t think it matters how many cores you have but just the speed of it. I had a 2.0ghz dual core on my system. I purchased and installed a 3.1ghz dual core on the same system and the playback problems are gone! Well just as long as I don’t do anything else while I’m editing. Like I said 2.8 is the minimum and 3.1 is not that far ahead. Now I can play the previews of edited clips without rendering them first. My cpu usage ranges now during playback from 50-80%, where it used to hang at 100% all the time.

So I don’t know if this just works for my system. But yea I would close all other programs anything that can rob cpu usage when editing. But it seems that you need a dual core 3.0 and up to edit comfortably. Getting a quad core at 3ghz will probably be even better for rendering time. For AVCHD it seems raw speed is what is needed to playback smoothly.

[Dave Sung]

I have a canon hf100 as well and experienced choppy playback in the editor. After I adjusted the project settings it played smoothly!

Here’s how:

Go to new sequence settings
choose ‘AVCHD’
Then choose ‘1080i’ not ‘1080p’ even if you shot it in 30p
Then choose ‘AVCHD 1080i30(60i)’

drag a file in and see if it plays smoothly. I think the problem occurred with premiere trying to adjust the frame rate as it was playing. Hopefully this works for those of you that were having problems with playback.