I've been editing on Final Cut Pro since 2001 but I'm considering switching to Premiere Pro. I purchased the Production Premium CS5 a while back to get AE and Photoshop but have not used Premiere Pro much yet.
I shoot in AVCHD and have been transcoding to ProRes 422 to work with it in FCP. However, while Final Cut Pro X edits AVCHD without having to transcode to ProRes, it lacks some features I need. So I opened up Premiere, imported the .mts files I shot at 1080p 30fps, and when i drag the files into the timeline they immediately need rendering (red bar above them, assuming that means the same thing as in FCP). When I render the footage, it plays just fine and looks great. However, when I don't render then playback is choppy, has parts of the video moving around in "blocks", and it seems like it would be tough to work with.
I'm running CS5 on a new Macbook Pro 15" with 2.0 ghz quad core i7 and 8GB RAM. So my what I'm wondering is.....is this what everyone else experiences when they playback AVCHD footage in Premiere? Is it possible to edit the footage without having to render clips in order to get a clear picture during playback? I spoke with someone at Adobe briefly, and I think she was telling me that normally two streams of AVCHD needs rendering, but one stream normally does not. Tell me some good news so that I can enjoy native AVCHD editing and not have to transcode everything I shoot.
Thanks,
Mike