I've given up on CS5 & Cineform - had problems for the past 8 months, I've rebuilt my computer, tried different memory, video cards etc etc.

I'm not saying they don't work - they just don't work for me and I can't waste any more time trying to sort the problems out.

I'm getting procoder as well which I assume should do a similar job to cineform (no firstlight) and I purchased the online tutorial on EDIUS (pretty good).

If this fails there's only one common denominator - me.

Welcome to the best kept secret in the video world: Edius.

No need for ProCoder (it's now integrated for the most part into Edius 5) unless you need some extra specific features.

Why would you even need Cineform with CS5? CS5 works with native files. No need to convert anything.

Why would you even need Cineform with CS5? CS5 works with native files. No need to convert anything.

True for the most part. However, the Adobe Creative Suite by itself does not support the export of multichannel audio. In fact, it insists on downmixing everything to two-channel stereo. And I had trouble with multichannel uncompressed audio that had been saved as multiple mono tracks: Adobe insists on downmixing all of those tracks.

As for CS5 working with native files, well, that depends on the system. Native AVCHD editing requires a beast of a system just to even handle it adequately. Neither CS5 nor Edius will change that fact. If you have even a mid-range editing system, it might not be capable of handling AVCHD without laboring.

...the Adobe Creative Suite by itself does not support the export of multichannel audio. In fact, it insists on downmixing everything to two-channel stereo. And I had trouble with multichannel uncompressed audio that had been saved as multiple mono tracks: Adobe insists on downmixing all of those tracks.Sorry you're having difficulties but I'm guessing you want to export to one of the formats that is limited to stereo exports.

Due to codec/licensing, some formats (eg MPEG2-DVD, MPEG2 BluRay) do downmix to stereo at export, but CS supports 5.1 with no hassles for me (and in one or two cases, 16 channel audio). I've done it before, but just to make sure, this evening I created a new 5.1 timeline and threw random clips and audio into it. Exports to aac audio and mp4 video worked as advertised.

If MPEG2 export in DD 5.1 is what you want, you have to buy the DD Surcode license. But many of the options do support 5.1 so it isn't correct to say that Adobe doesn't support it.

Sorry you're having difficulties but I'm guessing you want to export to one of the formats that is limited to stereo exports.

Due to codec/licensing, some formats (eg MPEG2-DVD, MPEG2 BluRay) do downmix to stereo at export, but CS supports 5.1 with no hassles for me (and in one or two cases, 16 channel audio). I've done it before, but just to make sure, this evening I created a new 5.1 timeline and threw random clips and audio into it. Exports to aac audio and mp4 video worked as advertised.

If MPEG2 export in DD 5.1 is what you want, you have to buy the DD Surcode license. But many of the options do support 5.1 so it isn't correct to say that Adobe doesn't support it.

Yes, that seems to be the problem. The truth is that my finished product is to be a DVD or Blu-ray disk that's playable on a standard standalone player. The trouble is that none of the multichannel output options available in any of the Adobe products without purchasing a license are compatible at all with a standalone player without requiring yet another transcode that degrades sound quality. Unfortunately, Premiere or Adobe Media Encoder cannot export multichannel audio as LPCM without downmixing to stereo, nor can Encore accept multichannel LPCM audio at all. That is because Adobe had to comply with the official DVD-Video specification, which limits LPCM audio to stereo. (And Adobe is not the only one; Sony's Vegas Pro can export 5.1 LPCM audio but DVD Architect Pro is limited to stereo on LPCM audio imports.)

And some of the work that I'm doing involves the saving of television broadcasts from a TV tuner card for re-watching at a later date. Unfortunately, AME cannot do anything with any compressed multichannel audio content at all, stopping the export altogether. This forces me to use a third-party program to extract the audio and manually downmix that to stereo before re-importing that into Premiere.

Don't bother with procoder. It's old and edius does most of that already.

TMPGenc works well for converting if you need a standalone converter.

One thing I find annoying is lack of options regarding DNxHD within edius.

Why in the world would you expect Edius to encode to the Avid-specific DNxHD codec?

Is Avid able to spit out Canopus HQ???

Avid (and many NLE's) can pretty much use any installed codec if the codec maker allows it.

I can use DNxHD in premiere, FCP, etc. I can use it to some extent (outputting QT movies for example) in Edius but I can not capture to an codec other than canopus.

This is EXACTLY why DNxHD is so widely used. It is free and can be installed whether you have AVID on a system or not.