Hey there!

I'm going a little bit out of my mind. I'm trying to capture some SD 16:9 30F footage off my XH-A1, and FCP (5.1.4) is not recognizing it at all. Ironically, it recognized it under the HDV 1080i60 setting, though I had no picture (which was when I realized I was in the wrong capture setting). Now I can't get it to recognize the camera at all. Unless the firewire cable suddenly, randomly froze (and I tried a second cable to check) I have no idea what's going on. I've tried getting it to recognize under different settings/tapes, and now nothing. I'm going nuts!
Any ideas?

Make sure your camera is set to the SD playback mode. Go to the FCP easy setup and pick the right SD one. You may have to turn off the camera, unplug it from the computer, turn it on, change the setting, turn it off, plug it in again, turn it on, then go pick your easy setup, then go to capture mode. You may have to restart FCP after you change the setup.

Hmm...no luck. I'm trying the DV NTSC Anamorphic, and no luck. Is that wrong?

Do you have anything else but the camera connected to the FW bus?

Sven

Yes, my Capture Scratch Disk is also hooked up to the same Firewire hub. It's never been a problem before. I did just upgrade to Leopard, and I'm wondering if that's part of it.

OK.
I would try this:
First choose the DV NTSC FireWire Basic easy setup in FCP. Then power down the computer. Disconnect the external disc. Connect the camera. Boot up the computer. Put the camera in VCR/Play mode. Then start FCP.

Bw
Sven

Good advice. I ended up restarting the computer first (without the other steps) for a different reason, then tried it: viola! I feel silly now for missing this relatively simple option, but I suppose it did not occur to me that a Mac would need to restart it's hardware for the software to work. My bad. CASE (sort of) CLOSED.

Not to start a war, but I guess Mac users are not used to rebooting their system to solve issues - a lesson learned by us Windows users long ago <g>. Good to hear the problem went away, and sharing how with others.

I dunno about that--first thing I do is restart when something weird happens and that often solves the problem. They don't seem to be all that different anymore.