I am in search of my next computer system (pc user now) and because I have a friend with a G5 I thought I would test my xl2 on his computer to see how it performs. To make a short story long we couldn't get it to even recognize the camera. We were attempting to use iMovie to capture some footage just to see how it would do.
I thought Mac's were supposed to be gods greatest gift for ease of use and compatibility. After all, my five-year-old pc recognized my xl2 right off. As a matter of fact, the G5, which he has had for about 6 months has never had to be turned off. Well at least not until last night when all it would do is freeze up.
We even did the total reset on my camcorder by removing both the main and backup batteries and reset the time/date stuff.

Question: Will iMovie work before it is registered? This is the only thing that I can think of for it not working correctly. All of the settings seemed to be correct (even it they weren't right it should still recognize my camera).

I haven't totally made up my mind against the G5 yet but is getting pretty close.

Thanks,
Jeff

I don't use iMovie on my G5, but a quick search in the iMovie support forums at Apple.com didn't turn up anyone else with a similar problem. I know some people have had problems with the XL series (although I think it was mostly XL-1) using FCP, and they often seemed to be related to what else was plugged into the firewire port(s) on the computer. Was the XL2 the only thing connected via firewire?

Using FCP I understand that you need to choose "firewire basic" in the capture settings. I've also seen the suggestion to try daisychaining the XL2 into a pass-through firewire port on an external drive instead of directly into the computer.

Hopefully some Mac users with XL2's will have some other ideas for you. You might also want to visit iMovie support at http://www.apple.com/support/imovie

Well according to Canon, it's supposed to work http://consumer.usa.canon.com/ir/controller?act=OSCompatibilityAct&fcategoryid=114&modelid=10350&keycode=macdr and Apple says so too http://www.apple.com/macosx/upgrade/camcorders.html.

I have been using my XL2 with my G5 and have never had a problem. The most likely suspect is something related to the fire wire set up or a conflict with another piece of software.

Without knowing more about the set up it is very difficult to troubleshoot. What else is connected to the computer? What version of Quick Time is installed? What pieces of software are installed that might relate to the fire wire bus? Are all system updates and software updates installed? What system is installed? How much RAM? Is the fire wire cable good (have you swapped it out for another?) etc.