Final Cut Pro dropped frame rate issue

Hi there, i currently shot a short film on the canon 5d mark II 30fps and i am trying to edit it in final cut studio 2. I have recently bought the new macbook pro 15inch 2gb module.
Now the canon footage is h.264 but when importing the clips into final cut pro 6 there is a lot of dropped frame rate issues but I thought this machine could handle HD footage?
Can someone more advanced than myself recommend what i am doing wrong or a work flow that i can work with to stop dropped frame rates and render times.
Last piece of information, the project will be entered in film festivals in the spring its only a 3 minute short and i have 5 folders of footage under 4gb each which was taken from the camera
Thanks for your help.
Michael

You are missing a huge conceptual point. If the file can not spool off of the hard drive fast enough, you get dropped frames. It isn't a processor or ram issue right now, it is a hard drive speed issue. Your system drive is overtaxed trying to run OSX, applications AND spool video. It just can't keep up. Changing the graphic card isn't going to help (and how do you change the card in a laptop?)
Get an external esata drive - with the new MacBookPro you'll need an esata Expresscard34 adapter for the computer to connect the drive. Firewire is not an option with that machine and USB2 will not cut it with high data rate formats like ProRes.
When you drop in the ProRes clip to the timeline and it tells you there is a mismatch, this means your preset for the timeline is something other than your clip. You WANT ProRes and you need the sequence to match your clip - tell the program to CHANGE the sequence to match the clip.
Video is not easy and it isn't inexpensive. Time to open up those manuals and your wallet!
Good luck,
x

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