So Premiere CC subscription ended and I am on the hunt for PC editing software...

Should I buy a used BMCC that included the RESOLVE dongle and edit in RESOLVE?

HitFIlm 3 express with the 10 dollar add on looks good:

Premium formats
Enables support for the Dolby AC3/AVCHD and MPEG-2 video formats. Check the logos on the side of your camera to see if you need this pack!

I've got some 1080 60p AVCHD 28MB/sec from the Sony A7II I need to cut up.

https://www.youtube.com/user/philipgoetz1

You could try the free Resolve 12.5 which has only a few things missing from the paid for version.

Lightworks is available on the PC and a number of Premiere users have moved to it. Boris software is available as a bundle with it

The Free version allows exporting 720p to YouTube and 1080p to Vimeo

I believe a number of people have edited Sony A7 material on Lightworks.

You could try the free Resolve 12.5 which has only a few things missing from the paid for version.

I don't think that Resolve supports AVCHD natively but there are free apps that can do lossless wrapper changing to MP4.
The latest Resolve 12.5 can also do 'round trip' working with other applications including BM's own Fusion 3D compositior, (also available in a functional free version), when additional facilites are required.

Resolve 12 (and now the 12.5 beta) partially support AVCHD i.e. import the H264 stream OK, but without AC3 audio.

According to this, BMD had to withdraw AC3 support because Dolby went after them for an exorbitant license fee:

https://forum.blackmagicdesign.com/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=37632&start=50

I've tried converting AVCHD.mts clips to mp4 using the "prescribed" ffmpeg method i.e. remuxing with transcoded PCM audio. The converted mp4 files are accepted by Resolve but are unusable - appears to mess-up the time code. Best option, in my opinion, is converting to DNxHD/PCM.mov and there are ffmpeg-based tools out there for doing that. Premiere/Adobe Media Encoder and Vegas of course can also be used for converting to Cineform, but that's not much use if your Premiere CC subscription has expired. Unfortunately GoPro Studio doesn't accept AVCHD files. There is a video conversion suite - FootageStudio4K - that will convert to Cineform. Christopher Young brought attention to it here:

http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/cineform-software-showcase/531609-behaviour-cineform-resolve-12-a.html#post1913200

But it's not free.

As for HitFilm Express 3. I gave it a go several months back and purchased the Starter, Premium (required for AC3 support) and Colorist add-on packs. Well it's OK, I guess, if you are into trendy video effects and creating blockbuster movies on a shoe string. But for bread and butter editing and grading, I couldn't really recommend it. For one thing the render options are extremely limiting - H264 (uses MainConcept), Uncompressed RGB.avi or Image Sequences.

if you are into trendy video effects and creating blockbuster movies on a shoe string.

It's always felt to me, from the demos and marketing, that it is compositor software for fan films.

Exactly that.

Alright. Thanks for all the tips here. I am downloading Lightworks.

Tried Lightworks for a couple days and then went back to Premiere...