Thank you Jim for the reply. Can you give me a little more information on what you mean to "transcode first." We do basic videos and I've used some older programs before but not Premiere. I loaded a short video into my computer (Dell Laptop M4800 i7 2.4GHz 16GB RAM Win 7 Pro) and it won't playback smoothly. If you could help me maybe via direct email instead of on here let me know and I'll give you my email address.