In a situation where no resizing, framerate conversion or filters are being applied, is there any significant quality difference between converting raw AVCHD (from a Panasonic HD40, for example) to CFHD avi using HDLink, versus placing the AVCHD on a CS5 timeline and exporting out to a CFHD avi from there?

1. You get 10bit depth of color space.
2. The computer will handle I-frames much easier then AVCHD.

Thanks, but both workflows produce the same result, don't they - the unedited raw 8-bit AVCHD will become 10-bit CFHD avis that can then be used for all subsequent editing and color correction. (CS5 export to CFHD has a 'high quality" checkbox which I believe is 10-bit)

I'm thinking/hoping the only difference is that the CS5 workflow allows the opportunity to cut out any large chunks of obviously unusable footage, to reduce the overall size of the CFHD files being used in the project.

Great question. I am new to video so I have alot of unusable footage at this point. I think you can edit in CS5 and get rid of the unusable footage but I don't know how yet. Can anyone shed some light on how to do that? Thanks!

In a situation where no resizing, framerate conversion or filters are being applied, is there any significant quality difference between converting raw AVCHD (from a Panasonic HD40, for example) to CFHD avi using HDLink, versus placing the AVCHD on a CS5 timeline and exporting out to a CFHD avi from there?

I pretty sure that the same Cineform compressor software is used in both workflows, so there shouldn't be any difference under the circumstances you describe.