[David Traverser]

Thanks guys. I think the 2 step process you mentioned might be the key to my puzzle. I don’t mind long rendering times (remember I’m coming from a PC laptop running vegas) But EXTREMELY long rendering times just didn’t make sense, especially since this G5 is more powerful than my laptop, even though it’s old by today’s mac tower standards.

The prores codec just doesn’t seem to like my Zi8 files, the result is a lot of clarity loss, and it takes a lot longer than the intermediate codec, which seems to be able to convert from the camera file in roughly 1:1 time. I’ll report back shortly with my findings on the steps you suggested.

Thanks again for the quick response!