Fustration with FCP and trying to edit in HD

Someone Please Help!
Over the last several days I have been trying to start to be able to edit in HD so that I can ultimately be able to produce a Blu-Ray option for my customers by June 2010 (i'm trying to get an early jump on a what I suspect is a steep learning curve). Up until early this morning (4am) I couldn't even get Compressor 3.05 to run but that is now finally going after an uninstall and re-install.
My problem is this, I normally do a three camera shoot of long events(commencements) in which in the past I have been able to edit in DVCAM synchronize the footage from the three different cameras, edit, put transitions in and output to DVD. Over the course of this year, I invested in three HD cameras a Sony Z5U(HDV), a Sony EX3 (XDCAM) and a JVC HM100U (also XDCAM). If the well was infinite then it would have been three EX3's but that's not reality and the three cameras have features which are complmentary to the others.
I have experimented using three small clips done in 1080 30P, and as was recommended converted them all to Apple Pro Res so as to be on equal footings by sending the clips through compressor and then onto the FCP 6.06 timeline. I then rendered what ever was required once on the timeline Project is also in Pro Res.
At this point, I am unable to put any transitions in(the time line will not accept them)between clips shot with the different cameras. Clip info shows the EX3 footage @1920X1080 Pro Res w/ 17.1 mb/sec data rate and the Z5U shows up as 1440X1080 Pro Res with 15.1mb/sec data rate. Both audios are 16 bit stereo.
To boot, the render times are v-e-r-y long I can't even image what it will be for a two hour project. An upgraded quad or 8 processor will help to partially rectify this, it but that's another 3-5K expenditure. Is there a simplier workflow to do what I need? What am I missing?
The HD looks great but its almost not worth the bother for this amount of energy, time and money expenditure. Not to mention the non-support of Blu-ray burning in DVD Studio. It's also counterproductive to suggest shooting in HD and then have to knock it down to SD to edit. Sooner or later this course of action will have to be abandoned as customers want Blu-rays and not DVD's.
Can anyone help?

All elegant suggestions. I appreciate your frustration, we see this often around here.
If you want to produce longform HD productions that your clients will buy from you, you must work out the details by starting at the output stage and working backwards.
if you want BD as the deliverable, you must first determine how to burn those BD disks, in-house or a service company? Buy a single BD burner drive or a full-on BD duplicator? PC- or Mac-based, Adobe or Toast software? Then you have to figure out how you will be supplying the movies for the BD burning runs.
Your old G5 Mac may or may not be up to the task of converting and editing full HD but you should have made absolutely certain of that before you committed to your camera purchases.
I stopped following pro and consumer camera developments the day we got our HVX170s but I believe each camera in your collection shoots a different version of "HD." You must convert all of your footage to the exact same codec and then use that same codec in your sequence to avoid extensive rendering. You stated that your clips indicate different aspect ratios or pixel dimensions and this indicates you did not make the conversion properly. Easily fixed but it's gonna take some time and a bit of research.
Blu-ray remains a weird enigma, I can't help you there. Apple will do what it wants when it wants and many of us will then be forced to make our BD decisions. Till then, there are many BD solutions on the market including Adobe and Toast. They seem to have their own complications so, since I have no immediate need for BD, I'll just wait to see what Apple offers.
bogiesan

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Welcome to the family, you'll be joining us soon.
The FCP product page says: > It features powerful new multicamera editing, native HDV support, ... edit everything from DV and SD to DVCPRO HD and fully uncompressed 10-bit high-definition video. Or work with new formats like native HDV (long-GOP MPEG2) and 50Mbps IMX... HD editing requires a 1GHz or faster PowerPC G4 or G5 and 1GB of RAM (2GB recommended).<
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Message was edited by: mjaffe00
Message was edited by: mjaffe00

I had searched the macbook pro forum, but not this one. It seems that the "screen tearing" issue has been talked about a lot, so I apologize for the repetitive nature of the post. I will say that I am fairly shocked that given how many people have clearly called applecare, no one there seems to have a clue that there is a problem with this video card. I have talked with at least 4 different people in the FCP specialty group, and not one had any clue what I was talking about... 3 of the 4 were fairly insistent that it was a video source issue on my side.
Message was edited by: mjaffe00

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Model Name: MacBook.........................Model Name: MacBook Pro 17"
Model Identifier: MacBook1,1...............Model Identifier: MacBookPro1,2
Processor Name: Intel Core Duo...........Processor Name: Intel Core Duo
Processor Speed: 2 GHz.......................Processor Speed: 2.16 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1.....................Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2...................Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache: 2 MB...................................L2 Cache: 2 MB
Memory: 2 GB ....................................Memory: 1 GB
Bus Speed: 667 MHz...........................Bus Speed: 667 MHz
Boot ROM Version: MB11.0061.B03....Boot ROM Version: MBP12.0061.B03
SMC Version: 1.4f12...........................SMC Version: 1.5f10
Intel GMA 950:....................................ATI Radeon X1600:
Chipset Model: GMA 950.................. .Chipset Model: ATY,RadeonX1600
Type: Display......................................Type: Display
Bus: Built-In........................................Bus: PCIe - PCIe Lane Width: x16
VRAM (Total): 64 MB of shared............VRAM (Total): 256 MB
Vendor: Intel (0x8086)........................Vendor: ATI (0x1002)
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Fustration with FCP and trying to edit in HD

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