I have a Sony HDR-XR500 and the way I use this with my Movie Edit Pro 17 Plus is connect the camera using the “USB Connect” to the computer; this shows up as a "Removable Hard drive" to my Windows 7 system.
In Movie Edit Pro 17 Plus, I can then use the File Manager/Media Pool to navigate to that assigned drive, and view the material that is on the camera, and load it in by dragging one of the recorded takes into the program. I use the Time-Line mode pretty much exclusively.