I've had problems with IMovie hanging(not responding) whenever I tried to use it. Turns out my video,which I had downloaded from a miniDV camera, was the cause of it all. It,the video,had been corrupted,or damaged,I believe,by a magnet that had been put too close to the tape itself. When I play the tape, the voice cuts in and out the whole length of the movie and the video itself is slightly choppy. I downloaded this on my Hard Drive and IMovie saw all this choppiness as individual events,I believe,so that I ended up with hundreds and hundreds of thumbnails that are only a fraction of a second long. When IMovie tries to open this video footage, I think it's too much for it and it takes a very long time to show just a few thumbnails and eventually nothing else happens. I don't have any problem with IMovie on other videos that I've downloaded on my HD,only defective ones. Is there a way to download from the camera in a way that IMovie will not set all these fraction of a second thumbnails and I can work to try to save them and put them on DVD?
Using Imovie 08, Macbook 2.2gighz processor, 10 gig spare on 120 gig hd, 2 gig memory
Recapture the video with a video digitizer from playback on a device that reads the entire tape - this will create a single file and iMovie will see it as one long video.
Dan
So is this a device I can find easily or is this a program?
Same device you would use for analog video in:
Miglia TV Max+ - around $250-299 - does all the heavy lifting so any Mac with USB 2.0 can use it - hard to find
Elgato EyeTV 250 Plus - around $250 - same as above - easier to find
Canopus ADVC-55 about $150 - uses firewire - input directly to iMovie - US website only
And you would use the analog output from your miniDV, i.e. the RCA-type plugs, or, as you asked previously, S-VHS cables will give better quality images for recording so go that route if you can.
Quite a few older Macs have video-in either built-in, or have video Cards from ATI or Pinnacle to accomplish the same thing. When used in dedicaed mode they are quite capable of capturing and digitizing video at reasonable quality.
Dan
Just to make sure I made myself clear on my first post on this, my original faulty videos are on a miniDv tape that I've downloaded to my MB using my didgital camera, not a vhs camera or tape. If this is what both of you understood,then you're saying I have to get a digitizer to be able to save my videos? I was hoping there would be a setting in IMovie that would somehow see the the faulty movie as one complete event.
As an update to my problems with IMovie 08, I got got fed up with the lack of features on 08 and the problems I've been having with it and installed IMovie HD. I wanted to do some audio editing and couldn't see any ways of doing it with 08.
After the install of ImovieHD, Imovie 08 is completely gone and so are most of my projects (many hours work)except for those that somehow ended up in Quicktime. Any idea if I can have 08 and HD in Applications at the same time and where my IMovie 08 projects have gone to?
OK,re-installed 08 and can open my projects once more.
Yes, you can use both at the same time, but not, as you found out - interchangeably! Apple really droppped te ball here....
As to your problem, yes you need an analog signal to re-capture your digital footage. iMovie cannot find the time code on your original digital video - and the blanking makes whatever footage it can locate seem to be hundreds of little clips. Re-digitizing will restore the time coding, you may still have problems getting iMovie to ignore the blanking.
Good luck...
Dan
I used my Imac running Imovie HD instead of the MB with IMovie08 and was able to capture the faulty videos much more easily than before. The sound is clipped and and video choppy at times but at least i don't have thousands of thumbnails. I found the settings I needed for this in IMovie HD-Preferences.Also with IMovie HD I think I can paly with eh audio more than the with IMovie 08. As you say, it looks like Apple dropped the ball with this latest release of IMovie
Thanks for the help
Now, if I can only get my IDVD to open and Kodak printers to be recognized..
I don't know, but I can't recall having this much trouble with Tiger. Is Leopard a bit of a Vista?
Still trying to edit sound on projects created in IMovie 08, with that program but not much luck. Re-installed HD just to see but again it takes away IMovie 08, and I can't work on my 08 project with IMOvie HD. I'm sort of getting used to some of these problems but I want to make sure I'm not doing something along the way that is causing these to happen. Is this normal?
That doesn't sound right - Apple's own workaround offered to iLife '08 customers who weren't happy with iMovie 7 was to re-install iMovie HD6. They also said that you would be able to continue using both - albeit with different source file formats. Here's the URL:
http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/imovieHD6.html (http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/imovieHD6.html)
You can't move iLife application folders or rename them from their defaults or iLife will "break". The only problem I know of is the iMovie 6/7 Help files would get confused, but that was fixed in an iMovie update recently. iDVD will only work with Apple SuperDrives, or drives that are on Apple's approved vendor list. If your DVD player doesn't work with Apple's DVD Player - it won't work with iDVD.
Happy Mac'ing,
Dan
Thanks again Dan. The riddle is solved about the HD/07 Imovie problem I was having. I was installing IMovie HD with a set from Ilife 06 and it was taking away Imovie 07. Instead, I've downloaded HD with the link you gave me and it doesn't affect IMovie 07, as you said it shouldn't...
That's great! I had the same problem when I upgraded to '08, and I did the same thing as you - I re-installed from my original disks !!!POOF!!! there went iMovie 7. Pretty good deal really - two different video editors for the price of one, and they are, as I'm sure you'll agree, different!
Happy Mac'ing!
Dan