[Gary Williams]

I have recently upgraded to Pro CS4 having been using CS3 for about 18 months and previous versions for over 10 years. I am very disappointed in the playback of standard (1080 25i PAL) HDV footage and have had to go back to using CS3. I guess my processor is just not up to the job as I am running with the minimum spec that Adobe specify ( ie Pent 4- 3.4mg) and 3gb of RAM. Adobe have changed the processes involved (they have introduced a new process called importer) and my CPU maxes out at 100% within a few seconds of playback starting and the image in the monitor panels runs slow or freezes (it ran at about 80% with CS3 and playback was fine!). I guess the changes have been made to provide for a wider range of file types however, if CS4 requires more CPU resource Adobe should change the published minimum requirements (still showing as per Pro2.0 as pentium 4 3.4m with 2gb of Ram for HDV footage). I have followed all of the instructions in the technotes but to no avail so I will just have to keep using CS3 until I do my next hardware upgrade. I would have kept my money in my wallet and NOT have gone to CS4 at this stage if I had known about the performance issues and I feel somewhat let down by Adobe.