Ruwan Andrew Perera

Use whatever you can/afford. It's really more about the editor than the program. All professional looking videos don't use effects (ie. 3D box, Star Wipe, balloon fade,etc...) they generally use straight cuts and occasionally a dissolve and once in a blue moon a cross fade. It really depends on what you are doing and who it's for. As long as you can make a 3 point edit you should be set. The famous example is Tarnation which was edited in imovie. With all that said definitely buy used software off of craigslist or ebay, there is no reason not to. Also pay attention to videos that you like and their editing. Buy "In the Blink of an Eye" by Walter Murch one of the best editors ever. If you are feeling adventerous you could download a free trial of Avid Symphony: http://www.avid.com/forms/info.asp?iTrackingID=MC35TRIALDL&cmpid=141 *warning steep learning curve*

Hummm.........I have 6.4 and I'm not sure if you could get a plug-in to edit with 4.5. Either way i'm pretty sure whenever you convert using the Sony Browser it will have an XDCAM codec required for playback/editing. You may be able to convert to MPEG 2 or another format to that 4.5 can handle but I'm not sure what program you could use. You may want to look into Adobe Premiere CS4 it supports native editing of XDCAM footage. I've been considering a change.

Thanks a lot. I used a CP-16, Arri 16 SR II and an Arri 16BL