Alright. Here's the deal. 5 cameras x 10 hours x 2 days. I have 10 hours x 2 days to digitize the tapes.

Obviously there's no way to digitize all the tapes in those 2 days. However, I'm hoping to at least get more then 20 hours done.

Question 1 - is there any way to speed up the digitizing (FCP 5.1) without losing data?

Question 2 - if i were to digitize some tapes in Premiere, could i import the files into FCP without issue?

On the PC platform, you can try our Enosoft DV Processor.

We have successfully connected THREE cameras at the same time and captured to separate files. i.e., 3 x 1 hours captured in 1 hour. Many capturing tools don't let you select from multiple devices that are attached.

I had 15 hours of safari footage and captured the lot in 5 hours.

Connecting three devices through a single Firewire port can be problematic - it all depends on the order the devices are connected, powered on etc.

Right now, the software is free to use (in beta).

Re converting PC-based AVI files for use in FCP, QuickTime Pro should let you do that.