Newbie needs help - First time using Premier Pro 5.5.2

Question

I have Premier Pro CS 5.5.2 install on iMac 2011 with Lion 10.7.3. I imported an AVCHD clip from a SDHC card using a usb card reader. The clips were really choppy and pixelated. The clip was shorted in 1920 x 1080 HA. I have been reading from the Adobe site and their Videos. I should have no problem importing AVCHD into Premier Pro.  Do I need 3rd party conversion software to convert the clip to Quicktime or what specific settings should I be using? Any suggestion would be appreciated.

Answer 1

With so many features that cannot be disabled, Premiere Pro requires significantly more horsepower than that iMac can deliver. FCP X also requires a decent amount of system horsepower as well. iMovie doesn't require much due to its relative lack of features.
And as I stated a few times, the iMacs are designed for convenience/looks first, low power consumption second, performance third. In fact, although they use desktop CPUs, the 2011 lineup uses mostly reduced-power versions of the i5 and i7 CPUs (in this case, the "S" variant of these CPUs with their lower 65W TDP instead of the normal 95W TDP). And their minuscule interior space meant laptop-class GPUs instead of desktop-class GPUs. In the end, you'd end up with a very large system that performs no faster than a decent laptop (in fact, the laptop HD 6770M is slower than the desktop HD 6770 (which is in reality a tweaked HD 5770) in games). Worse, unless you can find a Thunderbolt external hard drive for that iMac, you're effectively stuck with a single physical hard drive for absolutely everything, especially since both Firewire 800 and USB 2.0 (the other ports available on the iMac) are much, much slower than SATA.