I'm gonna start this off by explaining that I am not a smart person.

I discovered last night that I had been using FCP's regular sequence/capture presets for capturing my HD footage and working in it, even though I'm shooting 720p24pA.

So all my stuff has been off. I didn't know what was wrong with it, but I couldn't really figure out how anything was wrong. So, last night I started changing the sequence and capture presets.

I changed both presets over the DVCPRO 720p24, and I'm getting much better quality in my canvas when I re-import my footage, but for some reason the frame is much bigger than my footage, so there's this enormous black border around everything.

Can someone share with me their FCP presets for different HD footage so I can figure out what I'm doing wrong?

Just because you are unfamiliar with technology doesn't make you stupid. don't knock yourself. HD is a complex arena...experts still don't know everything about it. Now...

If you shot 720p24 at 24PN (24PA is for the DVX-100a) then the Easy Setup DVCPRO HD 720p24 should work fine. Just make sure that after you choose that setting that you create a new sequence and work with that one. The sequences that existed before you did the settings will have the old settings.

Are you sure you have the proper sequence settings? And you aren't 1080? And are you sure you shot DVCPRO HD?

How did you import this footage?