HD in Final Cut Pro

So a friend of mine just got Final Cut Pro. He has footage he filmed with an Sony HD Camera that he wants to start working with. The problem is, when he imports the file into Final Cut Pro, he can hear the sound alright, but there is no image, just white. I tried opening it in quicktime, but found I need the pro version to watch HD files. So I tried opening it in iMovie HD, but got the same deal with only sound coming through, and a white screen. Neither of us have any experience with Final Cut, but I was wondering could give us some insight on where we should start troubleshooting. Its a .avi file by the way.

How are you getting the files onto the Mac? Nothing on the Mac captures via .AVI containers. The white screen often comes up when Quicktime doesn't have the proper codec to play back an AVI file. If you open Final Cut Pro you can adjust the capture format in one of the preference screens. Be sure to select the correct format and also make sure that is the format you are editing with as well (I'm remembering this off the top of my head, so you'll have to do some hunting with FCP's 3 different preference menus). If the camera has a firewire port, it should transfer and be captured in its native format in a Quicktime container. Then it will be usable.

He transferred the HD file from his windows machine, and actually rented the camera for shooting, so he doesn't have it anymore. He captured the footage with Premiere CS3 and the Cineform Aspect HD plugin, both on trials which have since expired. The camera was a Sony HVR-Z1U, recording at 1080i (60). He basically wants to know what codec is needed, or if the footage will need to be re-downloaded from the source tapes. Thanks for the reply.