Just wanted to pass along an update. It seems as if the problem was hardware related, as it appears the XD optical disc was causing the mess. It was the only disc i had (the rental house i’m renting the deck from supplied me with this “test” disc so that i could test everything before going out into the field), but a friend sent me another disc. I loaded it up the new disc, imported some clips and everything worked just as it should… no problems.