[Floh Peters]

hmmm, where do you export it from; in other words, if you have Uncompressed HD material, how do you convert it to ProRes?

[Floh Peters]

[Mark Frazier] “Since I need to be able to make DVDs to justify my employment, what’s the next step? “

Several options, but I think the best one is to get BitVice (currently on sale), which can do your MPEG encoding and even create a basic DVD (without a menu).
Other options would be e.g. Toast, or the new FinalCutStudio including compressor, or maybe a reinstall of your older DVDStudio, which should contain the MPEG2 exporter for QuickTime

[Floh Peters]

[Paul Crowe] ” What are your thoughts about PRHQ v PRLT v PR Standard? “

Both ProRes and ProRes HQ can be 10 or 8 bit. Usually the non-HQ version is good enough for 99% of all stuff. If you have very complex source material or if you need to do keying with very fine details there may be a benefit in using HQ, but only if you come from sources that use this amount of detail. I would not count XDCam into this category.
We use ProRes most of the time, and use HQ only for very few critical images or projects.

[Floh Peters]

[Paul Crowe] “So anyway I did a read/write test to the main drive where the apps etc run from on the mac and one on the FW drive this particular program/media is. Is this the kind of info we need to progress?
“

Yes.

The fact that the problems also happen when your Kona card is turned off means that chances are pretty high that you run into a drive-speed related issue. From the numbers it looks okay, but since you are having problems I guess the drive simply cannot deliver the required performance consistently. An easy way of testing it would be to re-encode some of your clips e.g. to ProRes (non-HQ) or even ProRes LT in case you have access to it to reduce the data rate. Then do your playback tests again to see if the issues still show up. Most likely not. If not, then you either have to reduce your data rate (e.g. with using ProRes), or you need to get some faster drives.

[Floh Peters]

This is not related to ProRes, but most likely to your DVD Recorder. As far as I know nearly all DVD recorders with FireWire inputs do support a protocol that is slightly different from the protocol decks or cameras are using, and they therefore do not work correctly with edit systems.
One thing you could try, though, is to set your Acquire media codec to DV, since this decides what format the FireWire output will try to play out. Even if most of your material on the timeline is ProRes footage, if you set the acquire codec to DV the system will play DV via FireWire.

[Floh Peters]

This could either be a real performance issue, with your drives being not fast enough for your footage. You could e.g. use the Aja speed test to test your drive performance.
Or if you have a I/O hardware like an Aja card, it could be related to the placement of the card in your mac. Maybe it is in the wrong PCI slot. There are some recommended configurations on the Aja site.

[Floh Peters]

If you don’t use the new formats in the timeline, you should be able to open them in 1.1.3, I think.

[Floh Peters]

I think the XDCam tools are not Snow Leopard compatible right now, but maybe I am wrong about that. Haven´t checked that recently.

Did the file download correctly? Did you run the installer?
Try importing some XDCam footage from Media 100. Does the transfer app open up?

[Floh Peters]

Wow, thanks a lot. I´m speechless…

[Floh Peters]

[Mark Frazier] “Great theory. Didn’t work. The composite feed is Black & White, and the Y/C doesn’t seem to be producing a signal no matter how I configure the connections. “

Then you are still sending a component signal. Make sure to set the analog output to Composite+Y/C in the Media 100 hardware output settings.[Mark Frazier] “The result is an non-synced feed to the monitor, which makes it very difficult to edit. Any recommendations to get everything on the same wavelength? “

You could either send the Y out through a distribution amplifier and send one out to the Y in and one to the Ref in. Or you could try to loop the Y through the Sync in (Y out to Ref In, Ref Through to Y in; not sure if this gives you a clean image).

Btw, doesn´t the UVW has S-Video outs also? You could go Component in to the Deck and S-Video out to the monitor in case your monitor does not have a Component input.