I'm more than a little stuck!

I have a JVC HM100 which records in XDCAM with a quicktime wrapper, so you get a .mov file that you can copy straight into the FCP timeline and start editing. This is one of the main reasons why I bought the HM100 along with it's quality/size ratio.

I'm in Africa starting on a project that will last a few years and mean at least a few hundred hours of footage. I'm living in a vehicle so don't have the luxury of anything else than a Macbook Pro at this stage.

I need to buy some smaller cameras for a wide variety of cut away shots (driving past the camera when it is very dusty, strapping to the underneath of the vehicle etc etc)

Research suggests that recording in 1280 x 720 50p would be best with the HM100, however no smaller cameras will do 50p.

So I have to buy some cameras that will record in a different codec, size and frame rate. Damn!

So, my question is, how do I put this together in FCP easily with a minimum of encoding? Is ProrRes a solution?

Personally, I ALWAYS opt for an uncompressed (or at least super-minimally compressed) digital intermediate (DI) codec before editing, grading, compositing, telecine/pulldown, or ANYTHING. Mo' quality leads to mo' HD space needed, and sometimes you get multiple large files if you're doing pulldowns or other destructive processing, but IMO that's the way to go. Some productions and firms seem to standardize on different codecs, but for me, I usually go ProRes422 (while others go Pixlet or even TIFF squences). But YMMV! :)

ProRes is a good solution. They are still large files compared to the originals. Be prepared to back up to DVD or have a number of reliable hard drives at hand.

You might be able to find some small JVC HD consumer cameras that shoot in MPEG2 (easy to convert to QuickTime) but most small cameras now shoot in AVCHD. You should be able to find cameras that shoot 25p but if the HM100 isn't highly recommended for anything more than 720 at 50p, most (if not all) small AVCHD cameras really don't work well above 720p25.

be aware that CMOS cameras strapped to anything with vibrations or quick, jerky movements, can yield unusable footage due to the rolling shutter effect. i realized this AFTER i bought a HV30 to abuse in this fashion... still, a great camera otherwise!

Thanks, the HM 100 works with CCDs so hopefully that should be ok.

Are there any good documents outlying when and when not to use ProRes.

Transferring all of my footage from XDCAM (.mov in the case) to ProRes sounds painful, why shouldn't I just edit in XDCAM and convert the other footage to this?

Buying smaller cams is a real pain - they only ones not in AVCHD are the Sanyo Xacti range - but there is no PAL version - only 60p etc

Set the rendering in your XDCam timeline to ProRes. This way only the transitions, graphics and filters are rendered, saving time and drive space.