I seriously doubt they are going to find anybody to do this the way that they want. Like it was stated earlier… Real is a delivery codec. (Of course I would argue that MPEG-2 is also a delivery codec, and then HDV came out.) I hate to say it, but I think you have them in a good situation, pay for going back to the masters or don’t have the very long clips edited.
Or would it be right to say you are the in-house guy tapped to fix this problem?
(I say this because I used to be that guy at an university college and was always being asked to do ridiculous things when there was no budget.)
-Parke