Hi

I want to transfer a VHS to my Mac.

Setup...

VHS Player connected to DVD Player connected to iMac G4 using a FireWire Cable with Final Cut Pro 5 (Studio) Software,

How do i tell Final Cut Pro 5 to capture what ever it see's from the external source which is my DVD player (source as VHS player on the dvd player)

Please help as soon as possible thanks.

I assume you mean DVD recorder instead of player (or at least I've never seen a DVD player with firewire, but maybe there is such a thing)? Read the instruction manual for your DVD recorder, most of them only have firewire IN and not firewire OUT. It's likely that this is the reason FCP can't see it. In other words, the DVD recorder can accept firewire as input from your computer or camera, but it can't output video over firewire for capture by the computer.

Try using a similar setup with a camcorder instead of a DVD player. Most of them allow passthrough transcoding to firewire, although you'll probably need to activate a menu setting.

Alternately, you could use a device like this: http://www.adstech.com/products/API-555/intro/api555_intro.asp?pid=API-555

But if you're sure your DVD player/recorder DOES send video out the firewire port, then you may need to go into your FCP preferences and tell it to ignore timecode breaks and change device control to "non-controllable device."