[Dave Jennings]

If it’s not a universal binary (and I suspect it isn’t, at least not yet), it won’t load under Intel-native QuickTime.
You *might* be able to get it to load under Rosetta by forcing QuickTime Player to run under Rosetta, too. Instructions, cribbed from Apple’s support site:

Click the QuickTime Player’s icon in the Finder.
From the Finder File menu, choose Get Info (or press Command-I).
Select the checkbox named “Open using Rosetta.”
Close the Get Info window.

(I don’t have an Intel Mac myself, but assuming QuickTime Player is Universal, this should work.)

[Dave Jennings]

WRT the AIFF “hang” — there used to be a problem where a few kinds of audio exports (AIFF and uLaw, I think) would appear to hang but would actually work. You’d just get no progress bar or anything during the export. Don’t know if that ever got fixed, but support said engineering blamed Apple for the issue.

[Dave Jennings]

“Well, the question I have always had was when Optibase purchased Media 100 – why did Media 100’s stock become worthless?”

Well, that one’s pretty easy. Optibase never bought Media 100, Inc. Media 100, Inc. entered into bankruptcy, and Optibase purchased most of their assets. So, while the Media 100 “the product line” (along with the 844/x product line) ended up owned by Optibase, Media 100 “the company” continues to exists as a bankrupt entity with no real assets left other than the proceeds from the sale of the product line, which will get divided up by the court among their creditors.

[Dave Jennings]

If the Media 100 HD system is just using the software codec, and the software codec behaves like the old hardware codec (meaning, “the hardware codec used via QuickTime”) then it probably is using “Natural” for the low data rates like 5KB/10KB and not the old “HDR” setting. That’s the way the old, hardware QuickTime codec always worked. Below some threshold (something like 30 or 40 KB) it used Natural, above it was HDR. If I’m remembering my history right, this change happened way back around Media 100 4.0, when they rolled the HDR and non-HDR “QX” codecs into a single codec.

Do the clips recorded on your old system at the lower rate play back with the quality you expect on the HD system? If so, you could always use your old system as a capture station for your rough footage.

[Dave Jennings]

Are you working in 601? Sounds like you’re getting some of the vertical blanking, which can happen simply because of your source (DV only fills 480 of 486 lines, for example, leaving some blank top and bottom.)