Compressing to youtube quality before editing As my old version of Premiere Pro didn't support .mts files (files straight from my camera) I used to have a ridiculous workflow:

Upload the video to youtube
Download video as mp4
Make relevant edits
Export video
Upload to youtube

This seemed like a totally ridiculous workflow, so I started using DiVinci Resolve as it supported mts files.
The problem I have now is as the file is still in it's original (massive) format, it is slow to do anything and rendering takes hours.
I'm more than happy with the quality of the tiny .mp4 file that youtube returns to me so is there a way I can do the same kind of conversion with Resolve? It seems so ridiculous to upload to youtube then download, but at the moment seems to still be the most efficient.
Thanks!
Use proxy videos to transcode the mts files into something usable. Here's a short tutorial to get you started: