As I understand, after doing much research as I am not a professional user, merely an amateur user wishing to produce decent quality video (!), iMovie and FCE use AIC (therefore the same results) and FCP does not utilise AIC, but as this is aimed specifically at the pro market, this would put this out of the reach of most amateur users.
It is a real shame that Apple's codec is not adequate for most camcorder formats in producing HD as per the native format. I would suggest that a free trial of Adobe's software would give the opportunity of testing their software, unlike iMovie.