I have to edit footage shot in both NTSC 4:3 and 16:9. I have now been told that I may have to incorporate mini-DV PAL footage. I have never worked with PAL, although I know PAL has better resolution, more horizontal lines. What editing problems should I anticipate when combing NTSC and PAL footage? Once I establish my frame size and frame rate, will FCP automatically convert the PAL footage to the same size/rate as the NTSC footage?

Another question: we need to rent a camera for a shoot abroad. The choices are the Sony HD Z1, the Sony HVR A1 or the Sony VX 2000e. Does anyone know which of these cameras is the lightest and least cumbersome?

I would suggest converting the PAL footage to NTSC with something like DV films Atlantis.
I have been using that software converting from NTSC to PAL with great succes and it´s cheap.

Göran

I'm with Göran, don't try to include PAL footage in your NTSC FCP project .. despite the much heralded ability to mix PAL and NTSC rates in FCP 6, its actually pretty terrible (native conversion of NTSC footage in a PAL timeline is awful anyway).
Far better is to convert your footage to match your timeline before you start to edit.
Compressor's Advanced Format Conversion capabilities are very good and produce excellent results although the conversion is a very slow process.
Nattress's Standards Conversion plugins are notably faster than Compressor and do an arguably better job of the conversion.
I've never used DVFilm's Atlantis software personally but its certainly got to be far superior to FCP's built in conversion!

it isn't a PAL vs NTSC war. We all know that PAL is way less cumbersome with full integer frame rates, better hue consistency and frame size consistency across DV and D-1.

You need to convert your PAL footage to NTSC before editing if your video is going to be delivered in an NTSC format. You can use the Nattress standards converter if you aren't a big fan of long render times in Compressor.