I've liked the idea of AVCHD video, but the fact that nothing to date has been able to edit the footage -- even Sony's own Vegas 7 -- has been plain ridiculous. Sony has promised "coming soon" since their cameras launched back in November, but now, six months later, we finally get the news we've been waiting for.

Vegas 7 Professional will have a free update, downloadable from May 1. Huzzah! Users of the consumer Vegas Movie Studio Platinum 8 will get their update in July. Ouch, but at least you've finally got a date.

It is native editing too, not transcoded to an intermediate codec, so you won't be getting any generational loss. No decision yet on recommended spec, but it will have to be more than general Vegas use because real-time editing AVCHD is going to cane your CPU. We've been told:

It does not do too bad on a Duo CPU! Sony CS have come up with a faster way of editing naively that's all I can tell you...

Let's assume that's 'natively'... I don't want to call them naive about this just yet. Zing!! -Seamus Byrne

Tags: au | avchd | editing | sony | vegas | video