After a bit of time reading the VG20 manual and trying out the various controls, it occured to me that nothing is said about transferring the video from the camcorder by simply taking the SD card out, setting the write protect tab and plugging it into the computer. Instead there is this cabling process and special software-- PMB something. Seems like the easy way is just to move the card to the computer, set up a receiving folder on the computer and download. Is anything missed by this approach or is EXIF or other useful data lost?

When continuous shooting, all sony SDHC cameras will break the recording into 2gb file chunks.

PMB or CMU is required to stitch the chunks back together correctly. PMB can stitch directly off the camera via USB, or directly off the sdhc card via a card reader.

For short clips (less than 2gb in size) the file(s) or folder can be directly copied to the computer, without using PMB.

As noted, AVCHD specs "split" files over 2Gb in size into separate subclips when recording, you need to use PMB or something similar to "stitch" the file properly back together.

If you try just moving the files from a longer clip, you'll have some serious issues trying to read them...