[Mark Tierney]

Otis,

The Varicam format works very well in the PAL universe, (and I speak from substantial practical experience here in the same UK) but you do need to be clever about how you’ve planned your post.
Without fully auditing your workflow I would suggest in your case going the hardware downconvert route (come out of your playback machine via the SD/SDI at a resolution you can cope with technically AND aesthetically) for the bulk of your material if you really believe your drives won’t handle it, but you will need to capture all the under-cranked stuff at the original native resolution via the Kona 2 to keep the metadata flags that will allow you to actually use it as slowmotion footage. Putting that into a 25 frame timeline can then become a software downconvert exercise from there.
You don’t give many details of your edit rig, but I’ve had longform DVCProHD projects running well off internal ATA drives, so it can be done! Unless you’re attempting to do it from a Firewire drive you should be able to do your own conform at least. Write me, I’m happy to discuss this in detail. Just know you’re not alone: in about 4 hours I have to go help someone with a mammoth Varicam job that is currently ‘stuck’. But trust me, the format does work!

MT