I was reading in another post yesterday that the HD100 is not compatible with FCP and that you have to use a JVC deck to capture via firewire. I'm sitting here looking at the Easy Setup preset for "HDV-720p30". Isn't this what one would use to capture from the HD100? What about shooting in HDV and capturing as DV so we can use it now and archive HDV footage for later editing in HDV?

What other issues might I encounter if adding HDV to our setup? We have a robust system:

Dual 2ghz G5
4 gigs ram
AJA Io
Media RAID

So I'm more worried about the camera. We like the HD100 for ENG its style and placement of controls plus its seeming ability to do duty as a "film" making camera.

Currently FCP 5.0.2 supports 720p30 only. It will control the camera via firewire, but doesn not show the 720p60 stream.
I imagine it will only be a matter of days (maybe weeks) before Apple releases 5.0.3 with full support for the HD100.
I was assured by JVC last week that they are working "very closely" with Apple.
The complication of course is removal of pulldown frames from the 720p60 stream to create 24P clips. I'm not sure if they will modify Cinema Tools to do this, or create an automatic pulldown removal during capture. I hope its the latter.
At the moment, you can shoot 720p30 on the HD100, and I believe FCP5.0.2 will work with it just fine - but I can't confirm this because I haven't tried it.

If you are eager to start working with the HD100 on your mac, use DVHSCap (free download from Apple - google it) or HDVxDV to capture 720p60 m2t streams. Then use MPEG Streamclip from Squared5 to convert the m2t into a quicktime file in any codec you want. (Apple Intermediate codec is lossless but makes large files, and DVCPRO HD is really good with smaller file sizes.

I hope Apple releases their update soon. I don't like capturing with clunky DVHSCap.

Tim

BTW, The camera won't do a HDV to DV downconvert. It tells you what position the firewire switch should be in depending on what type of content it is playing back. HOWEVER, since you have an AJA iO, you could use the analog inputs to capture NTSC downconverted signal straight from the camera, and hopefully use another firewire cable for camera control and TC.

This is interesting:

The HD100 is now listed in the supported camera section of the FCP5 Qualified Devices list. However, still no update. This must mean it is close though.

Also notice that the BR-HD50 deck is at the bottom of page 2, but the note says "720p24 mode is not currently supported."

http://images.apple.com/finalcutstudio/finalcutpro/pdf/FinalCutPro_5.0_Qualified_20050902.pdf

FCPro 5.0.2 works with 720 30p for capture as far as our initial test go. but not 24p. With 24 it only shows black when set to the HDV easy set up.

Dave B.