I think next time I go serious camera hunting I'll try to find something that records in something less lossy, maybe in 4:2:2 or better.
Of course the file sizes will magically become monster-big, so a new camera will likely come with a beefier NLE computer, as well.
Yeah, file sizes become a problem. With 4:2:2, I don't think any DSLR can do it natively, but if I'm not mistaken, the 5DmkIII puts 4:2:2 out over HDMI, so an off-board recorder could capture it. The BCC can do 4:4:4 and RAW, but there comes the filesize hammer.
Or can I keep using any H.264 codec camera and just learn to convert/transcode the image files to an intermediate for editing?
http://directorzone.cyberlink.com/posts/list/125003523.page
That article, although seemingly new, is odd calling H.264 "new", it's at least a decade old. Heck, I think the replacement standard h.265 (or whatever it's called) is already approved a few months ago. H.264 used to have issues in NLEs, perhaps because it's not so easy to jump backwards, decoding without hardware, etc. Then, transcoding to an NLE friendly codec could save a lot of issues.
If you're just editing, I don't think it will make difference. If you need to transfer footage from one app to another, it will be best to encode to ProRES or DNxHD or CineForm as they can be re-encoded without any perceivable loss of quality. But even if you transcode to 10bit 4:4:4, your source is still 8bit 4:2:0, so you won't gain anything. Way back, I think the old CineForm app would have potentially provided some benefit, as it did some clever 4:4:4 interpolation. Effects done in the NLE or AE or HitFilm would then think it had a cleaner colour resolution to play with and could manipulate it bit more cleanly. I'm not sure if the GoPro stuff does that any more or not.
You could try ProRES'ing it, then correct/grade the snot out of it and see, but I don't think you'll be able to tell the difference from just transcoding it (as opposed to something that actually tried to "upconvert" the subsampling).
CraigL