Originally Posted by Jim_Gunn

Is this a prosumer Sony HDV camera like the Sony FX-1? If so, and you have Premiere Pro 1.5.1 or later, then you should be able to capture and edit natively in mpeg-2 (.m2t format I think it uses actually). You won't have to convert anything.

If it is a Sony consumer videocamera called "HD" or "high-definiton" format (not HDV), that records to a compressed, proprietary format of mpeg then you are going to need a plugin for Premiere Pro or do a conversion to AVI. There is one popular high definition format called AVCHD that a number of small consumer HD cameras use that is one such example of this.