Importing home video's into imovie

Question

I bought the Pyro A/V link converter box (API-550 Rev E & my Dip Sw Settings are 1=UP 2=UP 3=DOWN 4=DOWN). When I load 8mm from my vid cam the vid cam plays fine but on the computer (G5 Mac) in the preview window of imovie will show the movie being imported then stop showing the movie thats importing & turn blue for a second then go back to showing the movie being imported. This happens randomly & when it does the Imported Video is not imported at that part. How do I stop this & or what is causing this?
I also have 1.5gig's of running ram & a 250gig hard drive I'm not connected to the internet & I have the FileVault protection system preference OFF.

Answer 1

This is what PYRO's Technical support told me. I plan on getting back to them with follow up questions let me know if you have one you would like to pass on.
Tech Support (18 Tech) - 7/26/2006 1:41:45 PM
Tihs is not likely to be happening because of anything on your system (the pattern would be a bit different usually.) This happens because the hardware is dropping frames that cannot be properly translated.
Analog tapes may often contain spots where the magnetism is weak, the tape is stretched, warped etc where the signal that is read off of it when sent from the VCR incorrectly. The reason is that the VCR doesn"t build the signal; it simply does a straight electronic conversion of the signal on the tape to signals on the wire. The problem is that in order for a computer system to understand it as video, the signal must adhere to a strict structure.
When the signal becomes out of order or a part of the signal drops out, a video computer will have a problem and will lose frames unless hardware is present that can anticipate and fill/repair the missing component (most commonly, time-base correction.) These bad signals don"t typically manifest themselves visibly on an analog monitor unless the defect is prolonged (such as distorted video at a bad warp on the tape or the bad video between multiple recording sessions) but they are still there and anything that is trying to compute data from those signals is going to have a problem.
The only thing you can do is try to clean the heads of your VCR or Camcorder using a cleaning cassette or try to run the video through hardware that can do video enhancement/time-base correction, which will repair the signal thus allowing it to be captured uninterrupted. Every time the signal is interrupted, the video processor and DV compressor will take about a second to sync up and resume capture and that is what you"re seeing in those drop-outs.