XPS m1530 vs. 720p h.264 video editing?

Hi all,

I considered my m1530 to be a pretty speedy machine, but I'm finding it's choking on 720p h.264 video editing. In playback/preview of the clips I'm editing, there's a lot of stammering, stalling, video/audio desync, etc. I'm not adding many transitions or effects either--just trimming clips and putting together on the timeline with music. Once rendered the videos play fine, but having a hard time doing the actual editing.

I have:
T7500 2.2ghz
8600M GT video card
2GB RAM
WinXP and 7RC dual boot. 32 bit for both.
Using CyberLink Powerdirector. I've tried demos of Adobe Premiere Elements and Corel Video Studio too, neither had much speed advantage.
Pretty sure Powerdirector uses the quicktime codec--it won't edit without it installed (even on Win7RC which has that codec built in)
Videos are from an Canon IXUS 110 (SD960). 1280 x 720 h.264 .mov files.

So, questions are--
1) does anyone see an obvious bottleneck above? I know I didn't get the fastest processor, and 2gb isn't too much these days. 64bit? Software? Or is 720p just asking too much of a laptop processor and video card? I had no problems editing SD video before.
2) anyone successfully been editing h.264 files with no speed problems? If so what setup are you using?

Muchos thankos.

 

With my experience with video editing the 2 biggest bottlenecks would be processor power and RAM. I would suggest at least increasing your RAM and see how it performs.