Well, after all the issues with my new Sony HC-7 HD camcorder, it is a pleasure to report that I started editing the footage today with my Dell E1505 Duo Core laptop and Adobe Premiere Elements 3.0 with surprising results.
Although the laptop only has a 5400 rpm hard drive, it flawlessly captured about 20 minutes of footage (out of 60 on the tape) without a dropped frame. I was surprised at that. I have a 7200 rpm external drive for the laptop, but it is attached to my desktop for some other editing I'm working on at the moment.
Premiere Elements 3.0 is quite a change from my last version of premiere (6.0). There is a bit of a learning curve since some functions have new names in this version. I also miss the split monitor (although it may still be an option on this version... I haven't checked to see).
My editing methods required a significant change from 6.0 where I would edit using the Source monitor window to set in and out points and drag the clips to the timeline. In Elements 3.0, I edited on the timeline itself using the split clip function. Not sure whether I like this better or not. One thing I appreciated was that when I trimmed a clip on the timeline and deleted it, the gap was eliminated and the rest of the clips automatically moved to the left.
I'm not taking time to really learn the new version right now as I want to get the four hours of HDV edited and archived in a hurry. However, I wanted to report that I am surprised at how effective it is on my laptop... quite a surprise. Oh, and it hasn't frozen up once. That's been a "feature" of Adobe Premiere 6.0 on my "ancient" video editing desktop computer. Usually have to reboot several times during a full day of editing.
Your mileage may vary, but I was surprised at how the software functioned on somewhat minimal hardware.
Although the laptop only has a 5400 rpm hard drive, it flawlessly captured about 20 minutes of footage (out of 60 on the tape) without a dropped frame. I was surprised at that. I have a 7200 rpm external drive for the laptop, but it is attached to my desktop for some other editing I'm working on at the moment.
Premiere Elements 3.0 is quite a change from my last version of premiere (6.0). There is a bit of a learning curve since some functions have new names in this version. I also miss the split monitor (although it may still be an option on this version... I haven't checked to see).
My editing methods required a significant change from 6.0 where I would edit using the Source monitor window to set in and out points and drag the clips to the timeline. In Elements 3.0, I edited on the timeline itself using the split clip function. Not sure whether I like this better or not. One thing I appreciated was that when I trimmed a clip on the timeline and deleted it, the gap was eliminated and the rest of the clips automatically moved to the left.
I'm not taking time to really learn the new version right now as I want to get the four hours of HDV edited and archived in a hurry. However, I wanted to report that I am surprised at how effective it is on my laptop... quite a surprise. Oh, and it hasn't frozen up once. That's been a "feature" of Adobe Premiere 6.0 on my "ancient" video editing desktop computer. Usually have to reboot several times during a full day of editing.
Your mileage may vary, but I was surprised at how the software functioned on somewhat minimal hardware.