Outdoor Adventure USA

I picked up a lower end Sony HD camcorder (HDR-CX100). It works pretty well, but it's not obvious how to get the videos off of it and onto my computer in a recognizable format. Is there a way just to make mpeg or mp4 videos? I know some of you have HD camcorders. What do you do? Ideally I would like to have the videos in a single lossless type format for storage and playback. Is this ok or should I keep them in the native format? I know nothing about this stuff.

What are you using for editing software? Did the camera come with software? Whatever you have should let you convert to mp4. I use Final Cut Pro to import and edit. I can export to a number of different formats. If you're on a Mac, iMovie works very well. Not sure about Windows as I only use that for writing code during my day job and even then I run it as a virtual machine on my Mac.

It came with some basic software. I'll have to spend some more time with it and see if I can figure it out.