MX02 & Prores LT anomalies...

Hi,

Sorry, but a long post-
I have spent the day capturing and recapturing an 8 minute clip trying to sort out some irregularities before I commit to capturing the remaining 10 hours of tape. Here is my setup:
Macbook Pro 2.53 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo with express slot, 4 gigs RAM
OSX 10.6.1, FInal Cut Pro 7.0
MX02 installed with latest software/drivers.
Convergent Design HD-Connect MI with HDMI in, SDI out, RS422 (to MX02), fw (from camera).
Caldigit VR 3TB raid as media drive via FW 800.

This was all set up to bring in (via SDI) HDV 1080i material client shot on Sony HCR9... because of GOP weirdness and TC breaks when trying to ingest via firewire. Which kept giving me huge gaps in the timeline. So, read Shanes recent post about this common problem and SDI it is. Now out of the camera's HDMI, into the CD MI box and then SDI out of there into the MXO2's SDI in...
But sometimes the captures freezes / hiccups for a second here and there when bringing it in via the ProRes LT easy set up. Try & capture the same clip again, and it doesn't. Then again and it does. At similar spots which play fine on the camera tape... But I am able to bring the entire clip in as one piece, something I was not able top do before. So the SDI workflow certainly works here.

Now I notice something that may or may not be important: In the the log & capture window, while capturing to the ProRes LT codec, the video preview window does not play smoothly. I mention this because I also have captured the exact same clip but trying instead via DVCProHD 1080i / 59.94 setup- and the video preview in the capture window runs smooth as could be. And after trying two passes, not a hiccup in the capture either. It just seems less taxing on the system... given the preview window clue.

So finally my question: Even though Matrox has added ProRes LT 1080i capture to intel Macbook pros to their approved scenarios... and even though the DVCPro codec takes more bandwidth than ProRes LT, is my system still somehow not up to ProRes LT? I read about Shane getting regular ProRes 422 fine on his 2.4ghz macbook, so looking for suggestions / solutions.
Is there something I can do to make what I have run better?
Or ( as I run out of time ) is bringing in everything as DVCPro HD ( 8 bit that it is) not so different from Prores LT? For the record, I have inspected the same clip as both Prores LT and DVCProHD at 200% and toss a coin on which is better, at least to my eyes.

I had wanted to go the ProRes route because of other material to be integrated ( Canon5D MKII h.264 which I received a drive full of ) and seems about everyone on these forums recommends that.

Also, one more thing of interest. In the MX02 easy setups, when capturing prores LT the device control defaults to Sony r2-422 29.97, and DVCPro HD easy set up it defaults to Pansonic RS-422 29.97.
The Prores 422 LT capture was exactly 2 seconds off of camera TC, such as it is, while the DVCPro HD capture on the money. So, I changed the Prores device control to Panasonic, and at least the TC matches.
Thanks a lot.
Peter