Consumer HD camcorder, video editing, blu-ray burning

[jcc]

Wanted to start a fresh thread on this, as the older discussions are getting outdated.

I recently bought a Cannon Vixia HFR200 for $379, and it looks like a good purchase. It has a full HD sensor, which is pretty good in low light, and quite good in outdoor lighting, records 1080i60, 1080p30 or 1080p24 to SDHC or SDXC cards at up to 24Mbps bitrate. I got a 32GB card that last 3 hours of highest bitrate, 12 hours in LP mode (720p with high compression), or a few intermediate choices. Battery life is a bit of a constraint, as a full charge lasts a little over an hour of continuous recording, so if you need longer plug it in or get more batteries

It comes with a basic video editing program Pixela Video Browser, that allows scene cropping, titling, music, fades and wipes, and writes output to AVCHD format to DVD, or full Blu-ray spec to BD. I will soon purchase my first Blu-ray burner, so I will see how that works, but AVCHD DVD discs play fine on my Samsumg BD player and my PS3.

Any similar experiences with a budget HD camcorder setup? suggestions on blu-ray burners and media? I see latest deal at Fry's has BD-R media at $1 a disc, finally within my budget. Any bad experiences with BD-R brands, any to stay away from?

[jcc]

Update:

I picked up an LG BD-RE burner, WH12LS30 which came with the Cyberlink Suite, PowerDVD, PowerProducer, MediaShow, etc. That looks like a nice addition for the price (free), and can build BDAV or BDMV disks with custom menus. I got the cheapest Blu-ray media I could find on Amazon, Optical Quantum 25-pack for $20, and so far no problems with them. Some people claim cheaper disks don't last, but we'll see, I will keep a couple of copies of my productions as backup.

Another thing to note, my PC has borderline specs, a 2-core AMD Athlon system with 2GB ram. It works well enough, but transcoding 20GB of HD video can still take hours, so a modern quad-core or better system would be nice. I shot over 4 hours of video on vacation 1080p30, 24Mbps, so it is taking a while to get through it all. Loads of fun!