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[Paul Campbell] “Ok, I was hoping we could just skip the usual admonition here…

Assuming that I’m simply too poor to afford all that for the time being,”

I explained how to do it for zero cost, but you’d rather be insulting to me than respond in a civil manner.

Nice!

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[Paul Campbell] “(I don’t have an external monitor or TV connected here, so have a heart) “

Well, you should, so you can catch these problems before you output.

It is as simple and inexpensive as connecting a monitor to any DV camcorder (even a home video type will work great) with the camera connected to the Mac via FireWire.

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[Kevin Monahan] “you need a Sony DVCAM tape deck or camcorder to capture the tapes”

Not so much, even then.

Virtually all Sony and Panasonic DV camcorders (including “home video” models) will playback DVCAM speed tapes perfectly.

Obviously, the size of the tape cassette must fit the camcorder, so most would need to be the “mini” variety.

Laying back to tape at DVCAM speed would require a DVCAM deck or camera, but the quality would be identical if you just went back out to standard DV, anyway.

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Mic-level?

Line-level?

What is an “ENG cable?”

What do you mean by “hissy fit?”

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The show had to have been edited.

Most video editing software will export stills from the timeline.

Capture the area(s) of the tape from which stills are desired, and export the stills in the computer.

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How LARGE are the files?
I’m guessing HUGE.

FCP does not “like” extra-large image files in a video timeline.
You should convert them down to a pixel aspect size that fits your timeline format somewhat closely.
PICT, TIFF, etc.

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Some video switchers (“mixers”) can use Composite.
Some video switchers can use Y/C (S-Video.)
Some video switchers can use FireWire.

The first method yields good results,
the successive methods yield higher quality.

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[Matt Arnold] “I don’t have a problem with “physically” carrying out an audio mixdown – I’m just not sure exactly what this will achieve or how this will allow the editor to keep working, since he is still in the “Rough Cut” stage and is constantly pulling new clips in and out of the sequence. Wouldn’t this make the audio mixdown useless in that situation? “

I highly recommend that you have the client do the mixdown.

Then, report the results.

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[Dave LaRonde] “Good luck trying to key a gray background.
“

For that matter, good luck trying to cleanly key ANY background that was not specifically lit for the
purpose.

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Can you please post a still and/or a short video clip of the problematic footage?