you were bang on (or atleast I think). I plugged the cam direct into the firewire port, and it worked just fine. I know I have gone camera – external-computer before, but maybe that was on a machine this a seperate firewire port ?? unfortunately the macbook only has one firewire and no PCMI. SO I guess I will have to capture direct to the lappy, then most it across to the external. I should get any broken links if I copy the whole folder across ??
thanks for your help 🙂