The whole point of Vader taking the Blockade Runner was not only to recover the plans but to capture and discover who was involved in the Rebel Alliance, which from the Empires point of view had gone from being a small band of terrorists to suddenly this huge multi system planetary strike force capable of launching a large scale attack directly on an imperial stronghold.
Therefore taking prisoners and establishing who in the Senate was exactly involved in it was as critical to Vader as getting the plans back.
He only knew that transmissions were made to the capital ship NOT where abouts they were recieved. Given that the Blockade Runner was actually on board the larger craft as it recieved the transmissions ,whats the difference?
His first statemant in ANH to that Rebel Officer is "Where are those transmissions you intercepted? What have you done with the plans?".
Afterall he doesn't see the plans being carried, just the Rebel soldiers racing somewhere so he follows ,attacks and kills them. The only hint he might have got is where the last man screams "Take it " through the crack in the door and he has his hand well passed the otherside of the door as Vader runs him through with the lightsabre.....
Given that Princess Leia is already known to the Empire to be politically active often against many of their actions then his next phrase is totally in keeping with that so, he doesn't muck about with her denial she didn't actually take part in the attack and but was just a diplomatic impartial observer caught up in it because the ship was clearly still in the hold of the capital craft before it ran for it so the conversation goes:
Leia : "Darth Vader. Only you could be so bold. The Imperial Senate will not sit still for this. When they here you attacked a diplomatic-"
Vader: "Don't act so surprised your highness. You weren't on any mercy mission this time.Several transmissions were beamed to this ship by Rebel spies.I want to know what happened to the plans they sent you."
I really don't have much of a problem with this . He could have said "passed" but he didn't truly see that. But he immediately knows that she must have physically hid the plans in the esacpe pod Its only later that the stormtroopers discover there were droids put in the pod that may have been carrying them.
Again, this all seems like a lot of after-the-fact tapdancing to explain why, no, no, the scene still works. I mean, yeah, it kinda mostly sorta works, but it requires the audience to fill in a lot of blanks.
"Oh, well, Vader was chasing the guy, but he didn't SEE him hand the tape over, so that's why he asks the question."
Well, why was he chasing the guy on that ship, instead of storming the bridge?
"Oh, um, because he's looking for who's in the alliance because now they seem like a real threat."
Really? Then, again, why isn't he on the bridge? Why is he going after a random ship docked with the bigger ship? It's not like the random ship is an escape pod, and he has no reason to believe "Ah, THIS ship MUST contain the true leaders!"
So, if he doesn't know who's on the ship, and he doesn't know the plans are there, why's he bothering? And if he does know who's on the ship or did see the plans get handed over, then his line makes a lot less sense.
The answer to this is pretty simple:
These scenes were added because they were cool, and the people making the film were less concerned with fitting them into the continuity than folks like us are. Hidalgo & Co. vetted them to make sure they weren't explicitly contradictory, and stopped there. Everything else is a justification invented to excuse away the questions that naturally follow when trying to fit two pieces together in the puzzle that don't...quite....fit. They're close, but not exact.
And the thing is, they could've been exact. They could've been a perfect fit. Just not in a way that would've necessarily looked good or worked well within the context of the movie.
So, we're left to invent justifications for all of this stuff. It's ok. It doesn't HAVE to all fit. But...it doesn't all fit, and claiming otherwise strikes me as silly. Just accept that it doesn't fit and shrug. "Yeah. It doesn't quite fit, but it sure looked cool." That's your answer.
I would've liked a perfect fit, but I don't see how it could've happened while retaining the overall effect of the film, and in the end, the fact that it doesn't perfectly fit doesn't seriously diminish my overall enjoyment of the film. It's just a nagging little detail in an otherwise good movie. It's not like "Wait, WTF?! Now the Force is mitochondria?!?!?!" or "Hang on a minute, when they first met in the originals, they acted like they didn't know each other, but now it's clear that they did! What the hell?!" There are, put simply, waaaaaay worse transgressions against continuity than this.
I just don't think it should be excused with all of the backpedaling. Admit that it's not perfect, and move on. Hidalgo's job is, I suppose, to invent such an explanation to placate the people who can be placated by such a "canonical" answer, but it's still not obvious from the film if all you do is watch it. You still have to explain it away somehow; the film alone doesn't take care of that for you by showing you a perfectly seamless story.