New to video

Those who have been around a while are probably familiar with our photography, and that hasn't been a challenge because all it takes is a killer camera (Canon D20) with a nice lens (EF-S 17-55 f/2.8 IS USM has been VERY versatile), good flash (Speedlite 420), and a decent editor anyone can figure out (GIMP). I'm pretty well hooked up for stills. :cool:

Well, we got a nice Sony HD camcorder that records straight to MPEG4 and I've only managed to figure out how to get the video off of it... I'm stumped beyond that. My camera records in: MPEG4 AVC/H.264 (AVCHD) - I usually leave the quality set to HD, second from the best option. If I take the videos straight from the import folder they're unwatchable in VLC (very choppy), so i found I have to convert them out to MPEG2 to even watch on an a media player outside of the Sony provided software (PMB).

I have multiple questions:

1) What can I use so that I can bypass PMB? I like using it to pull the files off the camera as its simple, but beyond that the software is not very user friendly. If I can't view the videos as-is with a media player, what do I need to do?

2) What's the best option for editing video? I want to do the following: Join videos, cut up videos, be able to export to a variety of lossless/lossy formats, be able to edit ANY of the vids in my extensive porn collection, do some amateur fx, etc.

I'm no pro, but I've got an extensive IT background. I can figure most stuff out but editing video is very foreign to me.