There are several ways to scrub in FCP: In the scrubber bar: - Click on a point to jump to that frame - Click and drag to scrub through the footage -Pressing "l" multiple times scrubs forward at different speeds (starting with 100%) - Pressing "j" scrubs backwards at different speeds. - Pressing and holding down "k" and then "j" or "l" together scrubs slowly forwards or backwards with smooth audio - Pressing the right arrow key moves 1 frame forward - Pressing shift-right arrow moves 1 second forward - Left arrow moves 1 frame back - Shift-left arrow moves 1 second back - Home key jumps to the start of media/sequence - End key jumps to the end of media/sequence - Up arrow jumps to previous edit point (start of media/sequence, in point, out point, end of media/sequence) - Down arrow jumps to next edit point

Different camcorders flag the frames differently to play back 24fps as compared to 30fps even though they usually record them at the same rate. My guess is that there's an incompatibility between the cameras for recording and playback 24p. I'd suggest borrowing or renting an XL2 to recapture the tapes.

Can you tell us more about your system? CPU? RAM? Video Card and VRAM? Hard Drives used? Other applications that are open at the same time? Motion is much more demanding on video than the other apps and having the right hardware makes a HIUG difference.

What system are you running on and what is the video card?

If you want to play the video on a DVD player then you have to first convert the video to MPEG-2 and then convert it to the correct DVD format by "authoring" in a program like iDVD or DVD Studio Pro. Both of these applications can do the MPEG conversion automatically for you, but Compressor gives you more control over the quality.

Motion has some easy to use drawing tools. If you really want to use plug-ins, I usually get mine at www.toolfarm.com

You either have to drag the effect from the Browser onto the clip or you have to select the clip and then select the effect from the menu. Instead of splitting the clip into two with the Blade, select the portion of the clip with the Range Select tool (G) and then apply the clip. This allows you to keep the clip intact and apply the effect to a specific portion. These frames can be adjusted in the Viewer in the timeline in the Filter tab.

In some ways FCE IS 'dumber' than iMovie. Consider capturing in iMovie and then editing in FCE. Final Cut Pro has the ability to go through clips and set markers each time it detects a recording stop and start point in the clip. You can then select all those markers in the Browser window and have FCP Make Subclips from them. I don't use FCE so I can't say if it, too, has this feature. Look up Start/Stop Detection and Subclips in the User Guide.

Part of the problem is the system you are using. Motion really wants a high-end video card and lots of RAM and the iMac has neither. I run on an 8-core MacPro with 12GB of RAM and the top-of-the-line Radeon card and I can still quickly bring Motion to a crawl depending on what I am doing. 3D, Particles and Replicators are especially taxing. As far as CODECs go, are you transcoding to ProRes before editing? ProRes HQ is good if you're going to make an HD version, otherwise use ProRes for SD sizes.

Hello and welcome to the Graphics forum. I hope this will become an active forum for discussion and look forward to interacting with everyone. Jim