Editing USB, Nikon, Flip, etc. Point & shoot video
 

Recently got stuck editing music video footage from point-n-shoots and usb pocket cameras in Premiere Pro CS5. They looked great, but editing them was a pain in the butt. Playback was terrible, even with CUDA acceleration enabled. Wound up transcoding them to Sony XD-Cam EX. No more stuttering, erratic timeline scrubbing or blackouts.

Videos from a Nikon s8100 p-n-s took about 4 minutes to transcode for every 1 min (using a Early 2008 MBP) and Kodak PlayTouch videos took about 2 minutes per one.

Every camera seems to record in different formats and different flavors of each. :-(

After the nightmare I had trying to edit natively (yes, it can be done--doesn't mean you should, tho) I'm SO glad I took the extra time to transcode. Editing and multi-cam were a breeze afterward.

Also: if you're syncing with a CD music track, have Audacity resample it to 48 from 44.1. It'll keep time better and the scratch tracks on the cameras will sync up easier.