Jeff, this is not a "fix", but I worked out a way to reduce the loss of the beginning of the clip to about 2-3 seconds (at the most) and you could probably get it down to 1 second or so with a bit of experimenting and practice (which is a seven times better result in terms of the beginning gap).

I'd previously mostly logged each clip before capturing, but on my last 2 tapes of Native HDV 720p24 capture I tried Capture Now. But the "trick" with this is to rewind the tape at least 10-15 seconds before the beginning of each clip and then play. This allows the camera to "get up to speed" plus allows FCP to get itself in synch with the data coming off the heads and over the FireWire. I think this is where a lot of the "seven-second gap" comes from.

The "skill" is then in clicking Capture Now the instant the new clip appears. I wasn't trying that hard because I'd covered myself with a 10-second pre-roll on each clip anyway, but I think the loss could be gotten down to about a second (from the precise beginning of the clip).

I didn't post this before because it seems pretty lame, but then I thought that maybe some people (who are losing seven seconds at the beginning of each clip) might only be losing 3-4 seconds of footage they actually needed. So, for them, this "gap minimization" data might prove useful in some instances.

No, it's not lame, and thanks for your thoughts on it. It's just not a solution. I'm looking for the complete solution - and perhaps it's a capture card (hate them) - or perhaps the new AJA IoHD (except for the $3k price tag). Or better, perhaps - shoot 60p. I just don't understand why FCP can ingest HDV 720p/60 w/o issue but barfs at 24. Maybe I've something configured crazy wrong, but all my 24p coming into FCP via Apple's IC gets tagged at 59.94 - rendering it necessary to conform it in Cinema Tools - cool! Except the audio plays back slow at 19kHz or something now. So even capturing AIC (fine by me) doesn't seem to work for me...I want a 24p work flow solution that's real - and doesn't included capturing PLUS transcoding.

I could get an HDD recorder, but then I'm going to shoot .m2t so I can back up the stuff to DVD anyway, so I'll wind up doing what I said I didn't want to do. I need to do more research. There's got to be a way to shoot once, capture once and begin to edit HDV 24p stuff...

AHA! Ah. Ha...Hum.
 

New lead. I'm (*ahem) reading the manual, and on page 20 it says in the PLAY mode chart component/SDI Out in NATIVE mode, playback of 720/24p is 720/60p but, and it's a BIG but, the 1394 out indicates "same format as the left" so now I guess my lead fizzled. But you can, it would appear, get a different output on playback from the menu selection. I've got 720p, not native, so it should work. But it still gets captured at 59.94...there is a memo, though. "Synchronize the setting for FRAME RATE in the VIDEO FORMAT menu screen with the frame rate of the playback signal" -- maybe that's what's going on...

fcp
 

good info about fcp5.1.4