I've been looking at getting a new camcorder lately, and I've largely decided on the Canon HG-20 (Newegg.com - Canon VIXIA HG20 Black 1/3.2" CMOS 2.7" 211K LCD 12X Optical Zoom 60GB Hard Disk Drive High Definition Camcorder, Canon HG20 Reviews - Hard Drive - Camcorders - Cameras - Technology Reviews - washingtonpost.com). The problem I'm running into, however, is finding a good software suite that can edit AVCHD video. I've checked out and used the Tech Committee's HD camera a couple of times, and usually I just end up using Premiere (installed on some of the digital studio computers.) Obviously I'd love to just go with Adobe Premiere, but I really don't want to drop $1,000 on CS4 (and I'm not going to pirate it.) That being said, is there a good video editing/DVD authoring software suite out there that's not too expensive that will work with AVCHD format? I've read about Sony Vegas, and while that did sound enticing, as I understand it, that only works with Sony camcorders, and I'd want something more versatile.
Edit: As far as DVD authoring goes, I really need something that will let me create my own custom menus (background, custom buttons, highlights, etc.), and custom chapter markers (for some reason everything I look at is incredibly vague on this--it'll say that it allows chapter editing, but then it turns out it will only automatically drop chapter markers at certain points, like Windows DVD Maker.)