Capturing Live/Real-Time footage with the XL-H1
 

I'm really stuck in a bind. I was wondering if anyone knew how to capture Live/Real-time footage onto Final Cut Pro via firewire. I've heard a bunch of stories on how it was possible but I haven't found any evidence of it. I have a gig saturday where I have to capture live and then burn to a dvd, so an immediate answer would be great. I only have firewire available to me so I hope there's a way. Thanks.

You didn't mention what format you were going to shot it at. Assuming that you were going with 1080 60i, I think it would be possible to connect your firewire to a stand alone DVDR like a Panasonic DMR-EH75V and record to tape and burn a DVD at the same time. The Panasonic has a firewire DV input. Of course if your shooting in HD, the output to the Panasonic DVDR is going to be down converted to SD, but I'm not really clear if the H1 will down convert on the fly while recording. I haven't tried this myself, since I down convert HD to my Panasonic AG-DV1000 deck via firewire, then go from the deck via firewire to the DVDR to burn a disk in real time with no authoring and default chapter points put in every 5 minutes. The quality of the finished DVD is very good, since the deck uses hardware compression. For what it's worth, and may give you something to think about.

Well I'm actually shooting in DV since I found out that the H1 doesn't downconvert on the fly, only playing back from your tape. I have a Mac Pro and I'm trying to capture the live feed via firewire directly into Final Cut Pro. I can see the video live but when it comes to capturing it keeps saying that the tape has ended and only captures a second of footage. If anyone out there has any other program that I can run on a Mac that can simplify this so as not to use final cut, I'm open to suggestions.

Can't you just turn off the DEVICE CONTROL and manually capture in FCP? That is how I would do it in Premiere.

Yes, this is exactly what you need to do. It's found in the 3rd tab in the capture window.