Jack,
Walter Biscardi’s excellent tutorial has led to an epiphany, and I’ve made considerable progress since receiving your referral to it.
For my one-minute piece, I’m assembling the audio tracks first, and then cutting the video to fit that. Before speaking with you, I couldn’t get anything done for all the dropped frame warnings I was getting. Since then, I have been able to put together just what I want using 5 audio tracks. They all play back in real time, with transitions added, with no problem.
Basically, I am accepting that I will always have to render audio files as I place them on the Timeline, but for some reason not video files. It’s easy to accept because rendering those audio files takes no time at all.
My newest challenge is determining why, when I start to add video clips, I’m getting those dropped frame warnings again. I know it’s not because the clip and sequences settings don’t match.
I’m optimistic. And I’m really excited by what I’ve been able to do up to this point. Again, thanks to you and thanks to Walter. He is an unusually effective communicator.
I don’t know if it’s polite to spew all my specs to this forum, all the different settings in all the different places, and the specs on the Flip camera I use (which I’m loving). But, my computer’s specs might be relevant: MacBook, OS 10.5.7, 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 4GM RAM, 250 GB SATA @ 5400rpm, running FCP 5.1.4.
Greg