[Mark Hollis]

If you have an older computer, you may be best sticking with 1.5, though everyone I know offered me sympathy when I told them that is what I am using.

We installed CS4 on our PC, a Dell XPS 600 Pentium 840 Dual Core with 2G of system RAM and to describe it as “pokey” is an understatement. At four years old, the computer just cannot keep up with today’s applications and one cannot add any more RAM to it.

If you have a brand new dual quad Mac Pro or a dual quad Nehalem-based HP workstation, CS4 will certainly get out of its own way.

I don’t want to take issue with Ann, but there is still shrinkwrapped CS3 and there may still be CS2 in the pipeline. I would use froogle.google.com and look for what I can find from a repurable dealer.

What if there were no hypothetical questions?

[Mark Hollis]

If you record anything that is artificially lit, and you record in NTSC, you willget a “beat pattern” as NTSC and the American HD formats are based on 60Hz electricity, while China uses 50Hz. You see this a lot when someone shoots with an NTSC camera in Europe.

I have been asked a number of times in other forums about “frame averaging” or other effects to get rid of this annoying beat pattern.

Now, if all you are doing is shooting out-of-doors under sunlight, you’re good to go in any format. But something tells me that you won’t be doing that. And that is why I advise you to purchase a PAL camera.

I do realize you want to use it when you get back, but you may be able to either use eBay or some other service to get a lot of your money out of your PAL camera (which may be hard to find in the US) so that you can purchase an NTSC rig for here.

What if there were no hypothetical questions?