I had this issue some time ago with a Canon XM2 and a MacBook Pro. The workaround I came up with was to connect the external drive using USB for capturing, eject and reconnect with FW for editing.
I used to shoot 25p PAL with a Canon XM2. Just set your capture settings at DV PAL 48 kHz Anamorphic and that should do fine. Since PAL is natively 25 fps there’s no special settings needed beyond that.
Do you have any suggestions for a low cost (sub $1K) RAID solution? I’ve been looking at the G-Raid 2 and a Drobo. I’ve heard that the Drobo is better for redundancy than speed. Also, would I notice a significant difference if I created a software RAID as opposed to a hardware RAID?
Make sure that your field dominance settings are the same for both your source footage and timeline. Also, are you seeing this problem on an external reference monitor or only in the FCP interface?