Lol, kwajo (now that it's over) I think it's pretty funny we both had the same problem - people always say "search, there's like a million topics about this", but I never believed I'd find one with my (seemingly rare) occurence, so I just posted. Funny that our titles were similar too ("Finder gone nuts"). And that we were both working with video. Anyways, to me it's just further proof I should Erase and Install for Tiger - operating systems and video editing do not seem to last too long together with each other in my experience.
And Place of Dis, don't worry about ultimately not solving anything - you're being the first to reply was very comforting, and gave me something to do while I was scared out of my mind.