Need Advice About Powerbook Start-up Issue

Hi all, I've been having issues with my Powerbook recently. First, was the narcoleptic thing that had been going on since November - that was fixed by Apple two weeks ago.
However, when I got it back, the PB would go to sleep early despite the SP settings, and/or shut down if I left my PB on battery power.
Today, the Powerbook will not startup. It will chime, but after that the display just stays black. The fans are running, but that's it.
I tried: the PMU reset, zapping PRAM (it won't do it), booting from the installer disk, booting from the hardware test, T-starting into my G5, etc. I also tried booting AC only and battery only. Still the display stays black, and I have to hold down the power button for it to turn off.
Any suggestions would be great...would like to avoid sending it into Apple again, but maybe that's unavoidable, short of purchasing another laptop?

Sometimes the easiest is the answer, try hitting the F2 key to bring up the brightness.
Hopefully your video is OK, maybe try hooking up an external monitor.
Target Disk Mode would also be in the mix of things to try.

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  • Need advice about H.264 and Apple ProRes 422.

    When exporting a "master file" I can encode the video as H.264 or Apple ProRes 422 (etc). The H.264 is more compressed but still in 1080p? Does this mean that I do not have to compress the file with "Compressor"? What is the advantage of using ProRes and what is the advantage of using H.264? I want of course the files to be as small as possible but still at the best quality. Any advice?

    ProRes is an editing format. If you are archiving a finished project, you can create an extremely high quality "print" with H.264. ProRes 422 will use approximately three times as much memory. ProRes 422(HQ) roughly four times and ProRes 4444 up to 10 times (compared to the size of the file FCPX will export as H.264). 
    FCPX exports (shares) H.264 in highest quality (over 45Mbits/sec [if needed] for 1080p), you have no options to adjust for smaller files (or lesser quality from FCPX.)
    To get "as small as possible," you'll need to learn more about compressing video. As a comparison (to FCPX), YouTube limits a maximum bandwidth of 8Mbps (used to be 5Mbps -- I *still* compress to 5Mbps before uploading.) Even compressed this highly, H.264 provides excellent results. [Compressing in ProRes is going from 4444 down to 422 Proxy (not to be confused with proxy media used in FCPX which is 1/4 resolution, i.e. 960x540 for 1080, ProRes 422.) You cannot compress each of the different ProRes flavors individually.]
    You'll need other software to compress further than FCPX.  I use Quicktime 7 Pro. Compressor is another way to go (Compressor will let you set "compression markers" so you can vary the bitrates through various sections of your work).  The way to figure out your compression level is to find a section (less than a minute) with the highest motion high contrast (and/or changing gradients) and export at different bitrates. Watch for "jpeg artifacts" (blocking) and once you've gotten past that, that's the bitrate you should compress to. (I've had some clips that required at least 20Mbps.) It just takes a little practice to get a feel for it.

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