It also means I can experiment with some different formats for the conversions. The current format of choice is uncompressed AVI, though I may go for a photo-Jpeg encoded quicktime file in the future. There's also an Avid HD quicktime format, but I don't know how well that's supported.
There is a tradeoff between image quality and editability. Even with a pretty decently powered system, I can't edit most 1080/24p files natively unless they're pretty highly compressed, and then the quality suffers.
The solution is to edit with a proxy, which is a lower-resolution version of the original file. You edit and get the timing and settings where you want them, then swap out the source files and change the project settings to full-res and rerender.
While it's a bit of a cumbersome process, it's still a lot better than the alternative.
There is a slightly different version of this, which uses a different codec (Raylight) that has built-in low-rez proxies. In this case, you do all of your editing with the low-res proxy, then switch the codec to the high-res final and rerender the project. I've only tried it once and wasn't all that successful, but that doesn't mean it's not a good idea.
I also need to check out the timewarp feature of Combustion to discover whether it's better to pull slowmo from the 1080/60i, /24p, or /30p versions.