When importing from Canon XL2, audio is delayed by 5 seconds

Question

When I import from Canon XL2, the audio track is there, but it is off by a few seconds. At first it was only about 1 or 2 seconds, but when I re-imported it got worse. It's fine when I import through iMovie, but I lose my multiple audio tracks.
I know I can re align on the timeline, but that's not the point!
Thanks for help

Answer 1

You may have nearly filled up your hard disc.
1 hour of DV is about 13GB. Trying to capture a 2nd hour would take you up to about 26GB of space used up on your hard disc.
It's better to capture to an internal disc, or to a FireWire-connected external disc, as USB - even USB 2.0 - can't necessarily keep up with the constantly sustained data throughput speeds which DV needs.
A Mac needs about 10% of your total hard disc space to be empty, to allow for its internal 'housekeeping', log files, virtual memory files, etc. So if you have an 80GB internal disc, with, say, 13GB of operating system & programs, plus, say, 20GB of pictures, plus, say, 13GB of documents, and you add 13GB (1 hour's worth) of video, that's 59GB, and you'll need about 8GB of free space, that's 67GB accounted for, leaving about 13GB empty for your 2nd hour.
But that spare 13GB of spare space may be scattered around the disc, and not all in one sequential region, which may be why you're getting stuttering.
Not only that, but there may be 'dropouts' on the tape (brief signal disappearance) which may not show on the camcorder (..because many camcorders substitute a previous frame of video for any damaged frame..) but may only show up when you try importing. This may happen if, for instance, you recorded at a slower than normal speed, e.g; LP speed instead of Standard Play speed.
So check, first, how much empty space you have on your internal disc, and see if your external disc can be attached by FireWire, instead of the - what's becoming almost ubiquitous - USB connection.