If I dump 8G cards to an external HD through my Mac by copying the files on the card and then try and import them from the HDD into FCP 5.0.4 I get corrupt and broken clip errors. If I import the same 8G cards onto the P2 Store and then transfer those 8G files to an external HDD and then try and import them into FCP I get the same error. If I import the files from the 8G cards through the P2 store directly into FCP it works absolutely fine. Even if I firewire from the camera from 8G cards to dump the raw files and then try and import them into FCP I get the same error.

But:

If I dump 4G cards to an external HD through my Mac by copying the files on the card and then try and import them from the HDD into FCP everything's cool.

Am I getting broken and corrupt files from 8G cards because I need to dump directly to an HVX200 formatted external HDD instead of going directly through the Mac to the external HDD?

P2 work on 5.04 is known to be buggy. But the images you describe from the 8 GB card sounds like when you shoot 720 on a "pal" HVX and try to import it prior to FCP 5.1.2.

Anyway, you should consider the upgrade of FCP for it's general P2 handling. It's sooo myuch better than 5.04. (But you could test it first somewhere...)

Gunleik