HD editing with a C2D MacBook Pro?

[CMD is me]

I have 2.16Ghz Core2Duo MacBook Pro with the max 3GB RAM. I tried a editing some AVCHD video today. Importing wasn't bad, it took about 25 minutes for a 15 minute video. But exporting is taking A LONG time...

Using iMovie 08, exporting a 15 minute 1080i H.264 file to a FW800 drive is estimated 320 minutes! That's with no other apps running. Does that sound right? 5 hours to encode 15 minutes of 1080 video?

 

[Eidorian]

Quicktime and any application that uses it for encoding is depressingly slow.

 

[thedarkhorse]

It may be faster if you render your final video to the same codec that you are editing with, then use another program or a USB h264 encoder stick like this to convert to h264:
http://elgato.com/elgato/na/mainmenu/products/Accessories/Turbo264/product1.en.html
which has an internal processor that is dedicated to converting video to h264, so it's much faster than your cpu at it.

I'm not sure what codec imovie uses for avchd editing, I think it converts it to apple intermediate codec when you import your footage.

 

[Courtaj]

. . . or just think of it as an opportunity to finish those DIY projects, get some housework done, go for a drive in the country, and/or catch up on some sleep!

 

[tri3limited]

capture it, shrink the video resolution down so that it is tiny. Edit it as best as you can with the smaller size footage. Replace the clips with the original capture.

It's be quicker to edit. Just as long to export however.

(4GB of RAM is highly recommended for any form of HD editing)