I recently bought a Canon HF100 digital HD camera.
It's working fine and the videos looks good. Quite easy and quick to download to my computer. One problem though.

When I try to play the clips on my computer it's not working very good. Small stops/breaks every second or two.
How can I solve this?
My computer is a bit old. 4 or 5 years..

Any advice appreciated!

You did not give details of your computer, but I guess if it is 4-5 years old that is the problem.

I have found even some of the hi-powered laptops struggle with playing full HD content.

You really have to upgrade your system to get the full benefit of full HD.

Your problem could be due to several factors such as the amount of video card ram, processor speed and the age of the software you're using to view the video. The constant pauses leads me to believe it has to halt to buffer.

If you're using the software that might have come with the camera, it might not mesh well with your current, older operating system either.

Dealing with AVCHD is a new ball game.

I had a Sony camera in this format, recording at 1440x720. Try as I might, I could not able to edit it and play it back properly - stuttering was the worst effect.

That was on the latest Pentium and the latest video cards then.

I gave up on it.

Editing this same footage - as well as Full HD 1920x1080, on a new system I have just finshed is a pleasure.

System details:

ASUS Rampage motherboard
INTEL i7 965 Extreme CPU
12 GB 1866MHz RAM
NVIDIA Quadro CX 1.g GB RAM graphic card.
Windows Vista Ultimate 64 bit.

The difference between this system and another one we have using XP Pro and a Quad Core CPU, 4 GB RAM is incredible.

I am told most of the increase in performance is due to a variety of factors.

64-bit OS, more RAM and the Quadro CX which is sepcifically designed to speed up work with Premier.

Not really sure about the spesifics on my laptop, but if I remember right it has got 2 GB RAM.
Maybe I have to buy a new computer as well, or look into upgrading it.
A friend of mine who's more into computers thought I might try and download decoder/kodeks for the players (?)...

The only thing I need is to be able to look at the clips and do some editing. Most of the viewing will be done on a HD television I guess..

I've only used the software that came with the camera. Canon Pixar was the name if I remember right.

Thanks for the input!

With laptops the major problems is in the video card in it.

If this does not have enough memory, it will not play HD without jerkiness.

Hard drive speed can be another bottle neck. Couple that with too little RAM and you'll really have a problem. The computer will try to use hard drive space to CACHE the video while it's trying to get it from the same hard drive. So in effect it's trying to save time waiting for the resource it's using to wait! The result is major stuttering. This is way worse if your computer has on board video that "shares" system ram. That makes the system dive into the hard drive for virtual ram even more frequently. It's a disaster.

Putting the video on a different SATA hard drive than the operating system drive, adding more memory and installing a video card with it's own resident RAM really helps these systems. But it sure sounds like it's time for a new computer for you. Do yourself a favor and go ahead and max out the RAM and get a video card expansion, if video editing is a priority for you. The HD stuff really eats up performance and hard drive space.

Mine is an AMD 2core 64bit cpu
Geforce MB and grafics card
4 gig 800mhz memory with Vista.
This system is just OK for HD 1090x750, if I did much of it, or at higher res I'd need to upgrade a lot.