Working with the video of camcorders such as the Sony can produce a serious business. HD video contains four times the number of pixels that standard definition offers, and it’s much more heavily compressed.

Keep in mind that you need a powerful computer with a lot of memory to deal with the extra data and compression. Pinnacle for example, recommends a minimum 512 MB of RAM and a graphics card with 128 MB of RAM for standard resolution video, although that goes up to a GB of RAM and a 256 MB graphics card when working with 1080i HD video.

You can find plenty of software available that supports editing high definition videos. For example, the latest versions of Pinnacle Studio and Ulead Media Studio 8 can import and edit files in HDV format.

There are several ways to store your high definition optical media. Products that are based on the HD-DVD and Blu-ray disc formats are very expensive, and they will remain that way for the near future. HD-DVD players were announced a while back that they will cost $500 and up. You’ll also need a HD-DVD drive to write to the disc, which will cost as much again. You can expect the same story with the Blu-ray disc, as both the recorders and the players are going to be expensive for a while to come.