I know a few on here edit video clips so I’m hoping for some pointers on what spec PC will do the job without too much trouble. I have a five year old desktop which is not enjoying HD video rendering using Sony Vegas Movie Studio Platinum.

Spec is Intel Core 2 6300 @ 1.86GHz, 2GB RAM and plenty of disc space.

What are you using that does the job just fine? Any advice as to what I need?

Q6600 2.4GHz, 4gb ram and 8800GT graphics card here.. it’s a bit slow now due to the amount of crap I’ve got on it, but with a fresh install it’s still a nice machine. Graphics gard a bit outdated though. It runs hackintosh quite well so I use FCP for most video stuff now, and Premiere on Windows 7 for quick edits.

You say plenty of HD space… But what have you really got?

I use Premiere CS5.5 and have the following:

Z68 Motherboard
2600K CPU
8Gb of fast RAM
Velociraptor 10,000rpm HD
3x 2tb HD’s (1x scratch, 1x Footage, 1x Export)
nVidia Graphics Card 250GTS (2Gb), CUDA Enabled

It does the job pretty well, I can play 4x 720p @ 60fps files with effects at the same time in real time.
With my previous computer this video wouldn’t have been possible:
[video]http://vimeo.com/31575455[/video]

If you want to keep your current system, I would look at upgrading RAM and the graphics card.