Using XDCam Tranfer 2.10 to import footage off of MxR Express Card Reader (w 16gb Transcend series 6 cards) via my Macbook Pro laptop to external drive.

All works well, until get to very long 55 minute clip when the program sends up an error message half way through saying: "Import unsuccessful, may be disk drive is full.".... and yet there is plenty of space on the destination disk, and on the MBP itself for the Cache files etc.

The clip is fine and complete on the card. My work around is to use Clip Browser to get the clips off the card onto the portable hard drive. But if I then launch XDCam Transfer to wrap the files now on the portable hard drive as Quicktime movies for FCP.... same thing happens. YET, if I plug the portable hard drive with the Clip Browser transfered clips on it, into my studio Mac tower system and use XDCam Transfer there, it works perfectly. Time consuming workflow. My preference is to unload them in the field directly with XDCam Transfer.

Why is XDCam Transfer burping on my laptop? (OS 10.5.8, FCP 6.0.1).... any ideas why this import would abort there?

Your external drive is probably FAT32 which has a limit of 4Gb file size which is around 12 mins. So you can have a single .mov bigger longer than 12mins on that drive. Your options are to format the drive using the OS-X file system or to break the clip up into smaller chunks. The original clip on the card will be made up of several 4Gb chunks that get linked together to produce a single clip, however when you import withe the transfer tool the chunks get joined together into a single large file.

And you should use ClipBrowser so you have the complete BPAV saved because that's your camera master.

FAT 32 was indeed it.... re-formated disk, good to go. Thank you very much.