Analogue Passthrough to iMovie

I have connected my VCR via scart to the a/v terminal of my Canon MV830i and set it to AV>DV "On" which is the passthrough mode.
I have connected the camera via firewire to my iMac and opened up iMovie without a tape in the DV Camera ( as instructed ) and started to play the VCR.
Unfortunately iMovie states that the camera has no tape in it and the import button is disabled. If a tape is inserted and import now selected, it tries to import from the blank tape in the DV Camera.
Please someone help !!!!! Just upgraded the camera to do just this, dont tell me £350 has just gone down the drain ?!?!
Also, is it possible to have iMovie 4 and iMove 5 co existing on the iMac at the same time as I have heard vers. 4 works ?

Tangram
I rarely use the pass through feature to import analogue video to my iMac. I have a Sony DCR-TRV20E mini DV camcorder. However, today I attempted to import into iMovie HD (DV-PAL) about 3 minutes of old VHS footage using pass through. I had the same problem as you describe ("camera no tape") and could not import as the import button was disabled. Playing the VHS tape did not activate the import button.
Fortunately, I keep a copy of most versions of iMovie. I recalled that iMovie 2 always worked with pass through, so I reverted to that version and it all worked perfectly (first time). It is possible (and even desirable) to have different versions of iMovie co-existing on the iMac. I can't recall whether iMovie 4 works with pass through, but I'm pretty sure it does. I'd check it for you but have just packed all my gear away for the time being (post back if you would like it tested).
If you have a copy of iMovie 4 on CD/DVD (iLife '04) you can reinstall from the disc and it will happily co-exist with iMovie HD on your hard drive. As a precaution, make sure that iMovie HD is labelled as such (not simply iMovie), otherwise version 4 may overwrite any version labelled as "iMovie". As a further precaution, it may be a good idea to temporarily move iMovie HD from the Applications folder to the Desktop until the version 4 reinstall is complete.
Hope this is of some help!
John

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