Panasonic HDC-SD9 issues with FCP

Hi.

At work I went from being a PC user with Vegas Video to Mac with FCP last week. The transfer have been all but smooth.

I have not been able to import the avchd clips directly from the camera. After reading through apple support I realise that it might be easier to find the holy grail than to make FCP have native support for the Avchd (annoing when the brand new imac struggels and my old laptop 1,8 ghz 1 gb ram did support it natively through Vegas Video).

I work for a small company wich gather educational videos from different sources. We make some ourselves (therefore the Panasonic cam), some are sent by mail as everything from wmv, mp4 and avi and some are being collected from flash files online.

But, back to the Panasonic cam..I use Elgato turbo 264 HD to convert the video. I have tried different formats but I tend to choose the 720i (.264 compressor) to keep as much as the quality as possible. The video imports fine but I need to render the damn thing every single time I perform a certan task. And if I switch on unlimited RT the framerate drops like a stone and the audio is "choppy". Is it a way to make a batch run to render all the clips from one import? Is it wise to use a different format so I can avoid rendering all the time? What format is the best to work with in FCP?

I know this might be super-novice questions but I never met such issues with the PC program, and I was hoping to get through the video faster than before, but I have just been struggling the last couple of days.

Great forum by the way, thanx :)

Best regards Mikal
(Frustrated first time user of Mac and FCP)