I am doing a friend a favor and when attempting to capture a couple short clips from his Vixia HF21, I cannot get it to recognize the device on PP Cs5. Im using my go pro usb cord from camera to MAc pro i5

Before you can get an educated answer, you'll we'll need to make sure what exactly you're trying to do.

When we say 'capture', we usually mean to record some video that is streamed live into our computer, whether via FireWire (either DV or HDV), or via HDMI (using some HDMI capturing interface).

When the source of our video is an AVCHD camcorder that stores video locally as individual files (for each shot), we usually connect such camcorder via USB and import original files into our editing computer. This import can be done several ways, but is most commonly done by simply copying the files from the camcorder to a local storage medium (internal or external hard drive). There is no way to do a capture via USB. None of the camcorders, whether SD or HD, will do that. So, if you are trying to capture video via USB, you won't be able to.

In Premiere Pro, you'll just set up your project as AVCHD, then go 'File', 'Import', navigate to your CANON disk, drill down to /PRIVATE/AVCHD/BDMV/STREAM and select clips you need. They'll show up in your project right away. Drop them into the Sequence timeline and you're good.

To get footage off of my HF S20, which like the S21 has extra SD card slots, I just dragged the footage to an SD card. No cable needed.

Allen, I believe the original poster is talking about the HF21, which does NOT have extra SD slots. The HFS21 has those, but is a different model.

I've always had trouble getting Final Cut to successfully import Vixia clips, so I just get them from the Finder after connecting the camera (or SD card) and then convert to a format FC likes (you probably don't have to do that part). You'll find the clips in the "stream" folder that Predrag Vasic spoke of, on the camera or card, whichever you shot to. Try importing them manually into Premiere Pro that way.

My bad.

No SD slot = T_T