Just wanted to say I finally got FCP upgraded to the latest version and have been testing the new "HDV 1080 24p" (Canon HDV 24F) support.

It works great! I have a G5 dual 2.7 and the whole thing feels *pretty much* as smooth as DV. It captures to native HDV, and you edit in a HDV 1080 24p timeline. Pure progressive the whole way.

Print to tape works too and it records to tape exactly the way the camera (XL-H1 in my case) records 24F natively; 24 frames per second with repeat flags rather than bandwidth-wasting pulldown frames recorded to tape.

I recorded a simple PtV and it played back from the camera saying "24F" in the VF info display. Very nice!

So all you future XH owners/FCP users are very lucky. No sucky workarounds like us H1 owners have had to slog through for months.

Excellent. My interest in 24p recently has been because lots of our stuff is going to start ending up on the web for download, and if we could stay 24fps all the way, that would save significant space over 30fps. Other things are distributed on DVD, so 24p is nice there too, and some things have gone to film. Being able to shoot 24F and keep it in a 24 frame timeline with no pulldown would be good for what we do now.

Great -- thanks for the report, Barlow!

Sure thing, Chris.

Man, very good timing from Apple now that the XH cameras are hitting the market! Not that Apple didn't take their sweet-*** time in getting this very important update out...but here it is and at least it works pretty much the way I'd hoped it would. Actually, so far the timeline performance is much snappier than I expected, but the Kona card may be helping some.

To any of the FCP users out there that have been holding off on the 5.1 upgrade...well if you're considering one of these new Canon cameras--it's a total no-brainer now.

Well worth the upgrade price.

One thing that should be mentioned is that the $49 FCP upgrade to the crossover 5.1 version expires at the end of the year. Presumably it will cost more then. You have to get that before you can get the 5.1.2. It's well worth the low price.