OK, so I am now the proud owner of a Panasonic TM900 HD video camera.   I am getting used to using it and have been very impressed so far.   However, you will see from my PC spec that I need a new PC to edit my efforts with the new camera.   My dual-core Athlon is barely up to the job.   I know what I need (i7 quad-core, 1Gig graphics etc) but this purchase is going to have to wait until the end of the year unfortunately.   In the meantime I either choose to just stockpile my footage or I have a go at editing.   I have already decided, from advice on various threads on this forum, that for the time being I will ignore the 1080 50p setting on the camera.  I am filming in 1080i, and though I have tested with both progressive and interlaced, playing back on my TV directly from the camera has shown no discernible difference in quality.

I struggle to edit the 1080i avchd on my PC - no surprise really given my spec.  The general wisdom on here seems to be to convert to mpeg.   How are people doing this?

-  I have tried using super but it won't let me set a bit-rate higher than 9kbits - and the output isn't great, and is out of sync.

- Someone mentioned Nero, which I own, but I can't fathom out how to do it.

- I used 'Make Movie' in Studio 14 (but it took forever), and I may not have used the correct settings.  The eventual output was way oos.

I would really appreciate it if someone with a similar spec to mine, or who regularly converts avchd to mpeg with a tried and trusted method, could offer me some advice on specific settings to achieve what I want, so that I have an editable movie file.   This will only be an interim workflow for me but, whilst eventually I will own  a i7 2600k with 8gig mem and a super-duper graphics card, I am still sufficiently curious as to how I can get the best out of my existing PC.

PS  - the original avchd movie files playback faultlessly via WMP and are never oos.  It's only my efforts at mpeg creation which have created oos files.