When I attach my video camera (for the purpose of importing some clips into FCP-X) I noticed that spotlight is indexing the camera (which does show up as an external disk when I connect it, via the USB cable) I'm pretty sure that there is some contention between spotlight trying to index these files and FCPX trying to import them. Is there a way to stop Spotlight from indexing the attached disk?
How to stop spotlight indexing an attached camera
privacyspotlight
Related Solutions
I had the exact same problem, with all solutions above failing identically. Then I reexamined the directory listing for / and found a hidden file .metadata_never_index in the root directory. I removed this file and was able to turn spotlight on again with
mdutil -i on /.
mds is now reindexing the hard disk, all looks good for now.
To not have Spotlight index your Time Machine hard drive while it's powered and attached to your Mac, add Time Machine backup drive (by clicking on the + button at the Privacy tab of the Spotlight system preference. 
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Best Answer
System Preferences > Spotlight > Privacy
Add your camera once and it should be remembered.