Hi all,
I'm considering the new MacBook Pro which as we all know only has firewire 800. There are firewire 4 pin to 9 pin cables available would that work for capturing miniDV or HDV?
Thanks

Yep, 9 pin to 4 pin, 9 pin to 6 pin, 6 pin to 4 pin etc etc those cables work fine for control and capture of DV the standards are fully compatible

I have bought a macbook pro that has a firewire 800 port and a XH-A1 camera that has a DV port. The camera manual mentions use of either 4pin-6pin or 4pin-4pin. In my case should I be using 4pin-9pin? And will it cause any problem?

And will it cause any problem?

No, but it should be noted that the FW buss will "see" the camera as a 400mbps device and slow ALL communication on that controller down to 400mbps so if you have external FW800 drives hooked up as well, they will transfer at 400mbps.

Also consider buying an ExpressCard 34 adapter to capture via FireWire, thus allowing the regular ports to run at full speed. You could also purchase an Esata ExpressCard 34 adapter and build a SATA drive system (preferably a RAID) for capturing.

Thanks for the advice Shaun and Jeff!