Hi there,
I've just been introducing my XL2 PAL to Finalcut Pro.
(Recently moved over to an iMac after accepting my old Dell laptop just wasn't upto video editing)

Am I right to understand that the XL2 records as anamorphic PAL, and hence should setup Finalcut for that? There don't seem to be any other widescreen PAL standard definition options in FCP.

I had thought that PAL SD 16:9 was disinct from anamorphic 3:4 in that it recorded more pixels.

If anyone thinks I'm doing something silly, please tell me where you think I'm wrong :)

Nope, the only type of 16:9 DV is anamorphic. It uses the same number of pixels as 4:3 but just stretches them across a wider area. This is a common source of confusion on the XL-2, since the CCD's are high resolution. They are downsampled and anamorphically squeezed however when the actual image is written to tape. Use the anamorphic PAL preset and you should be good to go.

Perhaps we should add this caveat to our XL2 Watchdog FAQ (http://www.dvinfo.net/canonxl2/xl2faq.php).