After a friend let me borrow his Panasonic, I'm ready to bite the bullet and buy one.

However, I edit on a Mac (FCP) and it seems that there's a compatibility issue between FCP and the AVCHD. This concerns me since 1) I'm slow and 2) ignorant about these things.

Granted I know people don't post on here that things are going smoothly... usually the posts are about requiring assistance.

Am I reading too much into this?

i got mine today, and transcoding to Pro Res in FCP is seamless. My advice, get yourself
a cheap esata card, and use Esata drives, and you're good to go. Hopefully
FCP 3 will be out this year and we can edit AVCHD natively, but for now, no worries.
the camera itself is wonderful.

Theres a lot of people using the HMC150 with FCP. So yes, you are reading too much into it (which is good for you....)

Buy the HMC!

i got mine today, and transcoding to Pro Res in FCP is seamless. My advice, get yourself
a cheap esata card, and use Esata drives, and you're good to go. Hopefully
FCP 3 will be out this year and we can edit AVCHD natively, but for now, no worries.
the camera itself is wonderful.

I have never head of a representative of Apple ever saying that they would support AVCHD in FCP3. That is an assumption we make... because it makes sense. But as we know Apple doesn't always do what makes sense to their users (FW in Macbook Pro, Bluray support).

The more I think about it the more I want to switch to Adobe.

"The more I think about it the more I want to switch to Adobe."

I'm sticking with Apple, having invested a great deal of time and money. But if i was jumping in first time, i'd definitely be taking the Adobe package very seriously.

I really like the look of this Panny. As someone who wanted to buy the HVX but couldn't stomach buying into the P2 racket, i'm very tempted to put my XHA1 on Ebay and go solid state.

BTW, Anyone seen any comparison's between the HMC and the Canon? I'm talking video clips, not the specs that i'm aware of.

To the OP: was it version 6.0.5 of FCP? If not, recognize that there was no PH-mode support in 6.0.4 or earlier. If you're using 6.0.5 or later, you can use the Log & Transfer window to convert the AVCHD footage into ProRes for editing.

It was reported at IBC 2008 that Apple said they would be adding native AVCHD support to the next version of FCP. I don't know if they meant 6.0.5 and what we already have, or if they plan on supporting the codec directly in a (supposed) FCS3. The only thing you can directly count on for now is that they do have ProRes/L&T support right now.

I will soon be making the switch to an Intel Mac... install FCS... then upgrade it to FCS2.

If FCP 6.0.5 handles the AVCHD, then it's no sweat, correct?

"The more I think about it the more I want to switch to Adobe."

I'm sticking with Apple, having invested a great deal of time and money. But if i was jumping in first time, i'd definitely be taking the Adobe package very seriously.

I really like the look of this Panny. As someone who wanted to buy the HVX but couldn't stomach buying into the P2 racket, i'm very tempted to put my XHA1 on Ebay and go solid state.

BTW, Anyone seen any comparison's between the HMC and the Canon? I'm talking video clips, not the specs that i'm aware of.

http://jordban.com/hmc-150_low_light.mov

A very NON-technical test of the HMC-150 and the Canon XH-A1 in Low Light.

I will soon be making the switch to an Intel Mac... install FCS... then upgrade it to FCS2.

If FCP 6.0.5 handles the AVCHD, then it's no sweat, correct?

It will transcode it into ProRes or AIC and then "handle" it. But it won't handle it natively.