I have been looking through the manual but cannot seem to find it. When stopping and starting recording the camera places files as short clips instead of one long video file. This makes editing a complete nightmare. I am sure there is a simple setting change, but i can't seem to find it. Please help.

Nick, if you are stopping and starting the camera has to make little clips because you are shooting little clips. With digital aquisition, there is no way around this.

Now if you are leaving the camera running and you want to combine the 4GB file breaks into one long clip you can do this when transferring to your computer via the Canon XF Utility.

The Canon XF Utility lets you select multiple clips and merge them into one. You can select all the clips with Ctrl+A, or individual clips by ctrl-clicking the thumbnails of the clips you want, then choosing "Export to MXF" from the Edit menu and picking the "Merge all clips" option. This even works across multiple cards and virtual media.