I recently purchased a HDR-SR5E to replace a 4 year old Sony DV Camera that got wet during a shoot and was horrified to learn that my new HD camera was incompatible with iMovie or Final Cut Express!

I read all the forums (including the Apple Forums) and ended up downloading Streamclip and paying for an Apple MPEG 2 encoder as suggested on the Apple site. I am running a 24' iMac on Intel and i found that this did not work as i could not edit my footage.

I found Voltaic by accident and after some adjustments I purchased the program and it does what it says on the box. The reality is pay $30 (£15.60 at current exchange rate) or drop a cool £900 on Final Cut Pro, which im not afraid to admit i am not ready to use yet.

Basically Voltaic works and until Apple include AVCHD support in Leopard or iLife then its going to be the only choice for those wanting to leave media storage behind and go HD on a HDD.

I hope this helps!