The conventional wisdom is or was that 7d files should be transcoded to some IC like CF or DN or Prores. But now it looks like some people are just importing straight to their timelines and banging away. I imported a clip to an i7 920 with Vegas 9c and it played smoothly. The few filters I dinked around with responded better to the 7d footage than they do to m2t.

So, what are your experiences? Please include what you cutting with.

On a Mac with Final Cut Pro, I can do assembly edits in the native mov format without transcoding. And I can do an export in that same QuickTime format and they export very quickly and play back well even on modest dual core Macs. For anything involving mixing with other format clips, or anything that requires rendering, then the clips should be transcoded into another format that's less processor intensive for real time playback during your editing session.

"importing straight to their timelines and banging away" - absolutely. This is what I do on a Mac Octocore, 32MB Ram, Raid, FCP3.