Hi, I'm helping a cinematographer put together a reel of his work, working with final cut on my G-5 mac. He has the permission of the studio, but using commercial DVD's gives him the best quality of the images. I've tried Mac the R_____R. (trying not to advocate a program which can remove macrovision), but it gives me the picture only. I've tried Cinematize 2 Pro and was able to drag the files in, but when I put one on the timeline, it took about 1/2 hour to render 10 minutes of material.

I'm hearing from friends about using Toast, Popcorn, and other programs. Since this is a cinematography reel, I need as little compression as possible, so I chose "highest quality" when I used Mac the R____R. I also have MPEG streamclip, but have never used it.

I have about 20 hours of material to import into Final Cut, and some people have even advocated going DVD to DVD first, to remove the Macrovision and then importing, but I'd like to finish this in my lifetime.

So the bottom line is: using one or more of the programs that I already have, what is the easiest way to get video and audio with no compression into Final Cut?

I'm sure you've answered this millions of times, but I've looked through the forum for the past hour to no avail. Thanks for your help!