What Kind of Hardware Is Good Enough?

[Martin Curtis]

Shane, someone else here noted that NX5 files recorded using PCM audio was slowing down transcoding markedly and using AC3 audio instead resulted in transcode time of 3x realtime.

[Martin Curtis]

[Kyle MacDonnell] “It takes me 1 to 2 hours to convert 1 minute of AVCHD to apple ProRes”
That’s odd and very slow. On my 2.8 GHz Core2Duo iMac I can convert 1080i AVCHD from a Canon HFS10 into Apple Intermediate Codec (at around 135 mbps) in real time.

[Kyle MacDonnell] “I just rebooted & my finder windows have question marks on the menu bars?!?”

That means that apps have been moved from where the Finder expects to find them and the dock can’t update their location. If you haven’t been moving apps around, this could indicate an operating system fault. If this is a new Mac, I’d take it in to the Apple store to get them to take a look, or at least give their phone support a go.