It's interesting that a client would request a format. You can get AVCHD from a camera with a 1/6" chip up to a camera with three 1/3" chips, from a hand held point-and-shoot with no adjustment, up to a professional camera. That's like requesting that something be shot in HDV, or in Betacam or DVCAM. What camera is used, what lens it has, etc., makes a lot more difference than the format. And even in the AVCHD consumer cameras, you can go from 9mbs up to Canon's HF11 with 24mbs. A big difference there. The Panasonic 150 is a hell of a lot different than the Flip Mino HD. And, other than that one Panasonic offering, at this time I believe all the AVCHD cameras are single chip consumer cameras ranging from 1/6" to slightly less than 1/3" chips. Unless your client specifically mentioned the 150, he is requesting that you use a single chip consumer camera. I find that odd.

Hopefully Panasonic being the only one with a truly professional AVCHD cam will change sooner rather than later. It's a great cam hope that Canon and Sony are paying attention here.

I am currently transcoding my files to DVCProHD via the Transcoder download from Panasonic. Then I just dump the DVCProHD files on the timeline and go to town. It works quite well, but may not support non-Panasonic cams.

I see where Adobe is claiming AVCHD support in CS4, but no 720p yet....will look again at it early in '09. For now transcoding works OK.