[Jeff Meyer]

With a deadline and lacking time to convert it proper simply drop it on the timeline. Since it wasn’t shot at 24 it isn’t going to look like 24. Capturing motion picture quantizes time. The frame rate and shutter speed determine how this quantization takes place. Having quantized at 60fps a conversion to 24fps won’t have the proper cadence to the motion or the blur.

If you conformed the footage in Cinema Tools down to 23.98 and want it to be real time on the timeline just put your clip at the end of the timeline, hit butterfly-J, change the rate to 250% (60/24=2.5, if you want it exact divide 60 by 23.98 instead of 24, but the decimal portion is likely to be negligible), and put the clip where it belongs. I tend to use make speed transformations at the end of the timeline when possible – things tend to shift on me when I don’t.

Is this proper workflow? No. Will it look perfect? No. Will it look acceptable? I’m guessing yes, but that decision belongs to you or someone on your creative crew. Sometimes your back is against the wall and you just have to get it done. With a deadline of tomorrow and the tone of your post it sounds like it’s time for get it done mode.

When you’re using a different workflow tests at the front end are essential.

[Jeff Meyer]

I would first suggest hitting the H.264 with ProRes422. Use Compressor or Streamclip.
Then I would go into Cinema Tools and conform the 30fps 29.97 so Final Cut isn’t doing rate conversions. This simply changes the playback rate, no conversions, no rendering. Cinema Tools won’t work with H.264.
Lastly, on your Sequence Settings, Video Processing tab, are you using BEST on the Motion Filtering Quality?

[Jeff Meyer]

Chances are you would have better performance transcoding to ProRes422, but that said I think the bigger issue here is based on what you’ve posted you have 2gb of system memory on a Lion tower? Go to the Apple on the top left and select “About this Mac.” Do you have 2gb of system memory or more?

Other questions that come to mind are what kind of XDCAM footage are you working with? There are many variants. Select a problematic clip on your timeline and hit butterfly-9. What compressor, frame rate, and frame size are you working with?

Does your sequence match the media? Select the Timeline window and hit butterfly-0 for your sequence settings. Again, compressor, frame rate, and frame size please?

[Jeff Meyer]

With FCP in mind, the 6 core. With a possible Avid/Premiere future in mind, the 12 core. With rumours of the end of the MacPro surfacing I would lean towards the 12 core. If the MacPro line does end you’ll thank yourself for investing in the processors. If it doesn’t you’ll have slower FCP rendering, but still much faster than you had previously.
On my 12 core 2.66 with 12GB RAM the processor is the bottleneck in FCP, and the RAM is the bottleneck in everything else – Motion, AE, QMaster, Media Encoder, etc. Remember, Hyperthreading will double your logical core count, so 12 logical cores with the 6 core and 24 logical cores for the 12 core. That’s probably the reason I misjudged when I thought I’d save a few bucks with 12gb of RAM.

Hope this post helps.

[Jeff Meyer]

People have been having trouble with QT movies after the iTunes 10.5 update. Might start researching there.

[Jeff Meyer]

Regarding your AVCHD material, of Log & Transfer isn’t working look for a plugin for your particular camera. I would strongly recommend looking into Shane Ross’ tutorial for working with tapeless media. I would normally post a link, but I’m using my touchphone right now.
The Panasonic camera should Log & Transfer without any trouble. The HDSLRs can either go in via Log & Transfer after installing a free plugin from Canon’s site (search the 5D2 downloads) or can be converted to ProRes in Compressor.
The iPods and Drift should go through Compressor without a hitch. I’m guessing the Cybershot won’t give you trouble in Compressor, but there are a lot of different mpeg formats.

[Jeff Meyer]

The Final Cut project says hey, go find this file and play it from 4 to 8 seconds here, then grab this file and play from 17-24 seconds here. Deleting the files Final Cut Pro references (Capture Scratch) means your project is missing the pieces it needs to come together.

The Render Files can be recreated if the Capture Scratch is present, so feel free to delete those guys.

For project archiving look into using Final Cut’s Media Manager which you can use to narrow your capture scratch down to only the frames that are necessary.

[Jeff Meyer]

If you want to finish in 24p I would suggest converting to 24p at the front rather than the back. The HDSLRs and GoPro shoot 720/60, which will convert to 24p better than the 30p that came from 60p would convert. Compressor can do a nice job of converting frame rates, if you go to the Fame Controls, turn them on, and use Best quality Rate Conversion. Be sure to look into setting up a quick cluster if you’re going to use Compressor for your frame rate conversions. It will take quite a while. Quick Clusters can really accelerate the process if you have a Mac(Book)Pro with a hyperthreaded quad core, 8 cores, or 12 cores.

[Jeff Meyer]

Best advice I’ve got is hit it with ProRes. Everything. I would probably work in a ProRes LT 720p 29.97 progressive timeline since the iPods, Canons, and GoPro can all hit that. Uprez the 4×3 SD to 960×720.

As for getting the footage there I would use Compressor instead of Streamclip. You can queue everything up on one single job instead of babysitting a computer all day long. Make a custom Compressor preset for 16×9 to convert to ProRes LT, 29.97fps, not interlaced. Go to the Geometry button and pick 1280×720, pixel aspect at Square (1.0000).
Make another preset for the 4×3 content with the Geometry’s frame size set to 960×720, same pixel aspect.
Make a destination preset for all of the footage. You’ll bring media in this folder into Final Cut.

After your presets are built drag the footage in, drop the appropriate setting and destination onto your footage, hit Submit twice, and get a decent night’s sleep, and then start editing.

If you’re going to be doing a lot of colour correction or treatment you should go with ProRes422 instead of ProRes422 LT. ProRes HQ or 4444 is overkill for the footage you’re working with.

[Jeff Meyer]

I’ve heard of issues after updating to iTunes 10.5….