[Ann Bens]

Premiere does a very bad job in downscaling.
Have a look at the Adobe forum and look for posts by Dan Isaac. He has a wonderful workflow with remarkable good results.

[Ann Bens]

If an audio track plays in iTunes it does not automaticly means that it will play in Premiere. Could be a codec problem. If you want to be on the save side stick to wave.

[Ann Bens]

If your audio is different from the default setting it will choose a new track.
Your default settings are usually stereo but if you have audio which is mono it will automatically set it self to track 4.

[Ann Bens]

Drop it into a dv timeline and export to tape.

[Ann Bens]

Get a firewirecard installed.

[Ann Bens]

AVCHD requires a fast machine for good playback.

[Ann Bens]

Project settings need to be the same as the footage.
So hdv settings for hdv footage etc.
HDV footage can also be captured by HDV-split which will also give you scenesplitting.

[Ann Bens]

Project settings need to be same as footage. Deinterlace the slomo-clip in the timeline.

[Ann Bens]

When using scale to fit Premiere sets the image to 100 %. When images go black it means the are too large/many for Premiere to handle.
Reduce them in PS to 1440×1080 when no zooming or panning on the image.

[Ann Bens]

I suggest you recapture the footage with hdv split if you want scene detection or Premiere.