I need some advice - looking at upgrading to HD and am trying to calculate the costs involved.

Right now I'm running a Mac G4 dual 1.25 with OS 10.4 and Final Cut Pro 4.5 (HD). I'm thinking about getting the Canon A1 - really like my GL2 and would like to stay with Canon if I can. My main question is, is there a common-sense workflow shooting some format of HD with the A1 that allows me to use my mac and version of Final Cut? I have the academic version, so I don't think I can do the upgrade to FCP5 without spending the full purchase price, and I'm a little worried that my Mac might not be enough to handle HD anyway. Looks like I can't burn HD DVDs without at least a G5.

Anyone going through this or been through this that could give me some advice or knowledge?

Unfortunately I don't think it's practical to work in HDV (which is what Canon uses) with FCP 4.5. There used to be third party solutions, but I doubt those are really supported anymore considering the age of FCP 4.5.

Checkout the original license for your academic version of FCP. Older versions did not have the "no upgrade" restriction, but I can't remember when Apple changed that. It has to do with the serial numbers and whether the installer accepts the one you give it. So it might be a little hard to know for sure without trying. But this is something which might be worth searching for on Apple's FCP support forum, because I remember it was discussed there a couple years ago: http://discussions.apple.com/category.jspa?categoryID=123

But aside from that, I think you will find that FCP 5.x is more responsive and makes better use of old hardware, so aside from the HDV capabilities it's a worthwhile upgrade that you are going to need sooner or later. You certainly aren't going to be able to use 4.5 on an Intel Mac. And I think there are also some issues which may prevent it from installing on the newer G5's and/or MacOSX 10.4 without resorting to hacks.

Here are a couple other threads about running FCP on older Macs:

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=85002
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=85320

Thanks for the links - much appreciated. It does look like I can upgrade - I have the install disc for FCP 4 academic, and after digging through the fine print on the pdf that I found through the Mac forum it looks like they'll accept it for the $199 upgrade, so that's great news. Maybe I can squeak by with just a memory upgrade for a little while as I transition - looks like maybe FCP 5 runs ok, it's just an issue of render time and also not being able to use Motion.