Hey guys,

I have finally decided to take the plunge and get an HD Camcorder. Since I have had very good luck with the DCR series I am sticing with Sony.
My concern is that when I bought the DCR, my older laptop wasnt "fast" enough to download and process the video and I had to shell out $1100 to buy a dual core computer with enough memory and fast enough Video card (ATI). My older computer was dropping frames and freezing up. The "new" computer has been fine for downloading video off the MiniDv.
Now, with HD, we are talking about a lot more data being downloaded and processed, I am wondering if I wil have to buy another "fast" computer that can process and burn HD videos and can burn it on a regular DVD, or even Blue-ray DVD, although BR media is very expensive.

Also, what are most of you guys doing to back up your videos, leaving them on computer hard drive?

I would recommend a hard drive backup as well as an online backup. Hard drives DO fail, and if you only have it backed up to one hard drive at home, you run a high risk of losing your data eventually.

Your dual core should handle it but look at the spec's of the software you will be using. Some software may require a minimum processor. Your render time will take longer with HD. There are quad core desktops out there (PC) that are going for under 1000 bucks and have seen refurbs go as low as 600. Keep an eye on buy.com for some good refurb deals. My mac pro (4 cores) still takes a bit of time, but iMovie converts it down. Still comes out awesome. Better than my SD video. You will love the SR 11. Had mine since they came out. Shoots awesome video. Hopefully, the software will get better next year. Whats the spec's of your computer?

Forgot to mention, I store my footage on my hard drive. Don't have a blu ray drive yet. To expensive yet. Besides, I know of only a few who own a blu ray player so all my footage goes on DVD after its converted. Still looks better than a SD movie after editing.

kam 1996,

Sounds to me like your laptop is already fast enough. I use a HP Pavilion dv9000 laptop with a Intel Core 2 Duo T5500 @ 1.66GHz and it works just fine. It came with 1GB RAM but I ended up upgrading it to 2GB (very cheap) and it helped with the editing and rendering speeds. I don't use my computer to "watch" my videos on. I only use it to download, store, edit, and burn disc's with. If I just sit down and watch the videos on it, there is an occasional pause with my setup. But it's no big deal to me because I just use it to review my video's to see what I've got. I burn them to AVCHD DVD's and watch them through the Blu-ray Player on the big HDTV screen where I can really enjoy them.

Do yourself a favor and spend the money on a Blu-ray Player so you can actually "enjoy" your HD videos. I am assuming you already have the HDTV to view them on of course. They are so cheap now. I have seen Blu-ray Players complete with the HDMI cable at Costco for as little as $230.00. As far as I'm concerned, a Blu-ray Player is a "must have" if you're going to buy a AVCHD camcorder. But that's just how a "I" feel.

And you'll want to get yourself a dedicated stand alone HDD for storage of all your videos. At least a 500GB as the files are large. I back up mine on good quality name brand DVD's and a dedicated stand alone HDD. Use DVD+/-R's, not RW's for backup. RW's are not intended for long term backup. Even at that, you should occasionally make fresh backups of any DVD being used for long term storage. A second HDD for dual backup is also a great idea. There are many creative ideas you can use for backing up data. It just depends on how serious you want to get with it.

I bought a 6X stand alone Blu-ray burner several weeks ago from Circuit City when it was on sale for $250.00. That will work perfectly with my laptop since it is "stand alone". I haven't tried it yet because I feel that at $20.00 a disc, I had better have a nice long video perfectly edited to put on it before I try burning a BD. I will continue to use DVD's for backup since they are far far cheaper and I don't know if BD's are any better for archiveing. I plan on just using it when I have movies that are longer than 35 minutes and I don't want to be bothered with changing discs in the middle of it. 35 minutes is the maximum you can fit on a standard 4.7GB DVD. The picture quality and sound will be identical whether is is a BD or a AVCHD DVD. It's just a matter of how much content you can fit on it. IIRC I should be able to fit around 3.5 hours of AVCHD on a 25GB BD

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Ernie
Sony HDR-SR1 AVCHD HDD User