I was curious of the benefits of cineform. So far I can't use it on a few systems but may downgrade to xp and that may eventually help, but my question is more overall what are the benefits and than more specifically to my potential workflow.

First what is the benefits over staying with mt2 files?

Than given this workflow which may make it more or less valuable.

First shoot to tape and to a firstore DTE for editing in Sony Vegas 7.0

Import or copy the clips from the firestore and most likely use gearshift to make proxy files, at this point I heard that if I have neohdv cineform can make both proxy standard dv and cineform files as well from the mt2. would this conversion be as good as using neo to convert the files? would capturing from tape be any better conversion? That may be impractical given the immediacy of the firestore may make it time consuming to capture if its not making a big difference.

if the gearshift conversion does not have all the options I could always convert in gearshift and in neo and have mt2, avi and proxy files.

Now if using proxy files for most all editing, than switching out at the end and converting to final product of hd of some sort is using the cineform avi inherently better? especially if it was just converted from the mt2?

so OK, given that what about a final product? should it be cineform or should it just stay uncompressed hd? or should it be rendered to output media, back to tape/bluray/standard dvd/web and saved in a timeline edited form to be rerendered again in the future if needed to an uncompressed format as an archive in its most unaltered state?

And what about 24P/F from canon? is it helpful to convert from mt2 to cineform when shooting 24f/p ? how is that helpful and what do you use to edit than 60i or 24?

What about if shot in 1080/60i and then downconverted to a 1080/24 avi? is that good or bad to do? DVfilm recommends shooting 60 and using there software to downconvert to 24 over using 24f/p would cineform be a better/equal option to canons 1080/24 setting in camera?

and one last question, is there any reason to work at 1920/1080 over 1440/1080 if shooting a hv20, xha1, xlh1 cameras ?

I know its alot, but its not about buying the software these questions are helping me decide to buy the sofware and a few licences for several compters that will need to run xp pro or maybe xp64 and the trouble of figuring out how to do it or just run a second boot, or just format them and run xp/xp64 and forget about vista on those systems. Thanks