Importing MiniDV w/iMovie - Some bad Timecode

I've got about 25 miniDV tapes I want to import in order to archive them for future editing. What is the best way to bring them in? I started the process a while back, and I left iMovie '11 in "automatic" mode. Each clip was imported as an individual DV file. I believe it's using the tape timecode to accomplish this.
However, on some of the tapes I ended up with a bunch of 0.1s clips. Obviously these are pretty much impossible to work with. Maybe my tapes are starting to get old/degrade, hence my desire to get back to work and figure out the best way to bring them in. Should I bring them in on "manual" mode? Will this bring the tape in as a single MiniDV file I can break up later when I edit?
Any advantage to using FCPX to perform this (i.e. 30 day trial)?
thanks

Manual will help get around those 0.1 second clips. That's what I would choose if I was trying to digitize a lot of tape. Also each hour of video will occupy 13.5 GBytes of space. So you will most likely also want to purchase an external hard drive, reformat it as a Macintosh HD and then have iMovie use it as it's Events Folder.

Similar Messages

MiniDV camcorder iMovie Apple TV

I am using SD MiniDV camcorder (pal). I import and edit the clips in iMovie and then share the project to iTunes (ATV - large). Then I use ATV to watch it. I am somewhat disappointed about the picture quality in ATV. Some examples:
1) Play the clip straight from camera (plugging it to tv). Picture is good as expected.
2) Convert the (un-edited) dv-file to h.264 ((960 * 540, 4 mbps limit) using mpegstreamclip, then import it to iTunes. Using ATV to play it, picture is not so good as in example 1 but acceptable.
3) The easiest method: Share the project to iTunes (large) in iMovie. Picture is worse than in example 2 and there is quite a big difference comparing ex. 1 and ex. 3. It is difficult to describe it but the contrast looks worse and the picture looks like I am watching it through some misty glasses.
Now, I could convert the dv-files to AIC-format and de-interlace them (using mpegstreamclip) before importing them into iMovie. Perhaps the outcome from iMovie would then be better. But is there another way so I would not have to re-create my projects (editing and all..) in iMovie all over again?

No, that makes it even worse. Actually the medium choice is 640 * 360, since my source is 16:9. And my sorce is 720 * 576 (flagged 16:9).
I would think 1024 * 576 would be ideal in my case. But I really did not see any difference between 960 * 540 and 1024 * 576 (using mpegstreamclip to convert the dv-avi to h.264). They both looked ok although not as good as the original.

Error while importing music in iMovie 11 From itunes 10

Error while importing music in iMovie 11
I have the same error explained in a other post which was still left unanswered
I have this sound problem after reorganising folders by itunes, i tried to delete al files in itunes and also
deleted the xml file in the itunes dir, created new playlists, but still i have no music sound in imovie timeline
after dragging a mp3 into it. When i preview the file in imovie it souds ok.
Also i see the red dot with the number 1 in the itunes logo while dragging the mp3.
Is there a solution for this problem?
Former post;
Re: Error while importing music in iMovie 09 from iTunes 09
Posted: Jul 24, 2010 8:08 AM in response to: vincentplaces
I'm having the exact same issue, but still haven't figured out what it is. I note that at the top of this thread it indicates that there are two "helpful" entries and one "solved" entry, but I can't find the solved one, so maybe someone will repost it here or kindly link to it.
There is one icon missing though.
As I read through the excellent tutorial at http://www.kenstone.net/fcphomepage/imovie_09stone.html I scroll down to the point where he talks about dragging music in from iTunes, which is what I'm trying to do. I can see, in his screen shot, the extra little icon that is a red oval and a white "1" in it. I don't get that icon when I am trying to drag my music into the video. I do get the green and white plus icon when I try to drag my music in. Also I DO get BOTH the red 1 and the green plus when I try dragging in a sound effect, which I can do with no problem. But why not the music?
I've been able to drag in music with no problem in other productions, so I can't figure out what is going on with this one. I'm sure there is a setting somewhere that got flipped, but I can't figure out where.
In desperation I also tried adding an extra title slide at the end of my video just to make sure there is more video time than music time in the production, but that didn't help at all.
Any help guys?
iMac 27" Mac OS X (10.6.4)

Hi
Due to some kind of copy protection in iTunes - I don't copy directly from this in iMovie
to my projects. (Most often the result of doing it in iMovie is a DVD without any sound)
I do
• In iTunes - collect needed audio into a new Playlist
• then burn this out as an Audio-CD .aiff (NOT .mp3)
• This CD I copy into a folder on my Mac (often containing other material that's connected to the project)
• And then I drag and drop these .aiff files into my movie project in iMovie.
This works Greatly and even more so when I do my DVD.
Yours Bengt W

I need a digital camcorder that imports direct to iMovie - any ideas

I have been using a MiniDV JVC camcorder to import direct into iMovie - worked great but the camcorder heads are now worn out. So I use an Hitachi HD flash card camcorder that outputs AVI files. I then have to convert through Handbrake to get a useable file for iMovie.
This is much too slow as I produce lots of short video for customers - is there a better direct camera to get files straight into iMovie or should I use different software on the mac?
Last resort, I have been told to buy a pc to use for producing edited DVD movies - I don't really want to move off the mac - HELP?

Wow...good question.
Do your FCP setups have capture cards? You could send a signal from the toaster machine to FCP via the capture card and recapture the footage in FCP. Will take a while, but it should work.
Tough working with proprietary formats.
Shane

Importing clips from iMovie HD to FCE4

Hi. Have read with interest a couple of questions on this same issue, with the advice from Tom Wolsky seemingly being to not mix the two applications and just get stuck in with FCE. However, i'm finding FCE difficult to like/get to grips with. But more importantly, after attending some Apple onetoone sessions, it seems my Canon camcorder might be a little long in the tooth and there may be some tape slippage as I was getting time code errors when trying to import directly to FCE. The fix seemed to be to capture the footage via iMovie and import to FCE using 'show package contents' route. Having now though imported some footage from a second tape, I have some of the clips showing as Offline for some reason. Is the trick to import clips from IMovie as per Tom's suggested route on 9/8/08?

I import video from my camera into iMovie 4, because that is the last version of iMovie, I believe, that was capable of flushing unwanted video off the hard drive, and I can bring an entire tape into iMovie, trim it down for FCE, and then get rid of the unwanted footage. iMovie 6, like Final Cut Express, is a nondestructive editor and can't erase unwanted footage from the hard drive, and as you know, video uses up hard drive space FAST. To get rid of discarded edits, you either have to use iMovie 4 or Final Cut Pro.
iMovie is also much easier to import video into than Final Cut Express, with all the latter's complicated controls. With iMovie, you just plug in your camera, iMovie then says "Camera Connected," and you hit Play and Import. Stone simple. Also, in iMovie you can hear the audio as it comes in, and if I remember right (it's been a while since I did it in FCE), you can't hear your audio tracks as your video imports into FCE. Not a big deal, but an annoyance.
Once the video is in iMovie, then I cut and trim the video to get rid of all substandard/unwanted stuff, and then Empty Trash, which erases the unwanted video off the hard drive, saving mucho space over the course of a project. Otherwise, you're just stuck with the unwanted video, and all it does is fill up your hard drive. Then you export (or "Share," in iMovie parlance) your video from iMove as a QuickTime movie, and drop that QT movie into Final Cut Express's Browser. Then create your FCE project from it.
The only objection I have ever seen to this procedure is people complaining that their QuickTime movie from iMovie has to be rendered in FCE before FCE can use it, and this takes a bit of extra time. Well, that's true, unless you export your video from iMovie in a form that FCE can use natively. Then it doesn't need to be rendered at all--it's just as though you had imported it from the camera directly into FCE. Most people don't know how to set up iMovie to do that.
Here's how I do it: (this is iMovie 4; I assume other versions are the same), Select Share > QuickTime and choose Expert Settings. On the next screen, select Export: Movie to QuickTime Movie, and click the Options button. In the Movie Settings window that this brings up, on the upper (video) part of it, under the Video checkbox, click the Settings button there, and for Compression Type choose DV/DVCPRO-NTSC, and under Compressor Quality, move the slider to Best, and click OK. Under the Sound checkbox, click Settings, and then choose Linear PCM, Stereo, and 48.000 kHz for Sound Settings. Under Render Settings, choose Qualty: Best. Just below that, uncheck the "Prepare for Internet Streaming" box. Then click OK, and the window will go away, and you're ready to export.
Give the video a name, and a place to save to, then click SAVE. The QuickTime movie that results from this can be dropped straight into FCE and requires no rendering; it works just as though you had imported it directly into FCE from your camera.
Tom B.

Importing clips from iMovie - jittery

Just got Final Cut Pro 5 and I'm having a problem with importing clips from iMovie into FCP5. The clips were fine in iMovie, but the images are jittery in FCP. I tried Apple Care, but they wanted to charge me $200 to answer my question eventhough I just bought the software yesterday!
any ideas most welcome - thanks

Nowhere is it advertised that iMovie is compatible with FCP.
One is a consumer format, with less features, like lack of timecode. The other is a professional format, which relies heavily on timecode.
Yes, output to tape from imovie, then capture with FCP.
#20 Using iMovie to Capture for FCP edit
Shane's Stock Answer #20:
iMovie handles the media differently from FCP, specifically where audio is concerned. So it is not a recommended workflow. Here's why...
iMovie captures using DV Stream (.dv) standard which does not use timecode. That is a big disadvantage over the way that FCP captures in that you can't go back and recapture the material at a later date if you need to revisit a project.
The DV/NTSC specification (the one FCP uses) also calls for seperate tracks for audio and video, even if you capture it as one clip. iMovie' DV stream format is muxed audio and video, which means that they are tied together (I can't get into specifics because I ain't no engineer or programmer). FCP is a bit more demanding and captures the seperate audio/video tracks, either in a single media file or as seperate video and audio files. With FCP you could capture video only or audio only because each is defined by the DV specs. while with iMovie you can't.
Also, if you drop the iMovie footage into the timeline, your will get the RED render bar forcing you to render the footage in order to see it...
"There's no need to fear, UNDERDOG is here!"

What's the best format to import in to iMovie?

Okay, here is the situation, I have a lengthy Keynote presentation which I plan to export via QuickTime so it can be imported in to iMovie in order to do voice-overs. The question I have is what the best format is to use to export from Keynote in order to import in to iMovie. I am obviously looking for the format which is the smoothest, doesn't lose any quality, and will look clear once imported in to iMovie. Also, there is no reason to use H.264 since size during the transfer doesn't really matter to me, besides, H.264 seems to be somewhat jerky with Keynote exports (or maybe it's just my computer) as I am using some of the graphics intensive transitions and effects.
Also, I know that when you send movies directly from Keynote to iDVD or from iMovie to iDVD, it uses a format which is directly compatible and there is no conversion that takes place, is there a format which will work this way from Keynote to iMovie or does it always have to do the conversion.
Finally, the other thing you should know is that I created the presentation in Keynote using 1280x720 in order to achieve the true widescreen aspect ratio. Now, I am NOT looking to keep this in HD, once I import it in to iMovie, I only need the standard DV Widescreen resolution since I will eventually transfer it to iDVD to burn it as a widescreen DVD. So, I would also appreciate some sort of input as to whether I should export the QuickTime file out of Keynote as the full 1280x720 and then let iMovie do the down-sampling, or should I export it directly out of Keynote using the standard definition widescreen resolution? Please, I would appreciate ANY help on this!!!

Thanks for your suggestion Bruce, however I found another way as well. I finally found that using the full resolution (1280x720) with Apple Intermediate Codec @ 60FPS turns the best results (for a relatively low disk usage). I finally went with the 60 frames per second because I was having problems getting a somewhat jerky output using Current or 30FPS in any format. I realize that iDVD reduces the FPS eventually, but it seems to be perfect when I take that route. Although the jerkiness isn't noticeable on most effects and transitions, if you use the newer transitions like Reflection or Doorway, you will definitely notice a less than perfect playback.
I know that I said that file size didn't matter, but I decided using uncompressed video was just too large, I think the file size was like 25-50GB or something like that. I took forever to import in to iMovie, so I quit with that route.
I really appreciate the Garageband suggestion, that was by far the best way to go. I never really tried using the new GarageBand in iLife '06 so I didn't even realize that it had movie scoring—what a GREAT feature! I definitely should have recorded directly in to GarageBand rather than in iMovie, something is just not right with iMovie's audio handling. Anyway, thanks for the help!

Can't import videos into iMovie

Hello, there!
I just captured a few videos with my screen capture app on my windows laptop. After I transferred them onto my iMac and converted them into .mp4 files i wanted to import them into iMovie but when i selected them only video 4 and 6 out of 6 videos imported into iMovie. i don't know whats the problem when i try again to import the other videos he is loading for like 1 second and nothing happens. i have already tried to restart iMovie and have also restarted my mac.
Also, this is not the first time something like this happens. but last time the problem just disappeared after a few retries...
please help! i want to upload them to youtube as soon as possible!

iMovie uses QuickTime file formats or DV Stream files directly from a camcorder.
If your files don't open or play properly in QuickTime Player they will not "import" into iMovie.
If you're authoring on a PC you must keep this basic fact as part of your your export scheme.
iPod videos are usually 320X240 and will not look good when scaled up to DV dimensions. Some use 480 width MPEG-4 video codecs that could scale but you may not be happy with the results.
Most Windows exports use Windows only codecs and this is the reason you're not seeing the video. Try exporting as a DV format (blah.dv) from Movie Maker. It may only appear as an option export to .AVI using those codecs.

Cannot import photos into iMovie from iPhoto

I have used iMovie for years to make a video (and then a DVD) from my photographs. The photographs are all in iPhoto events. In the past, i create a new movie, select photographs for the iMovie browser and drag some of them into the movie work area. The problem which just came up is that if I drag in 10 pictures, all of the pictures in the movie show as the same image. They have the correct mixture of portrait and landscape according to what I was dragging in. If I try to "run" the movie, I just get a blank screen. I have tried:
1. Deleting all the pictures and dragging them in again.
2. Restarting the program. (iMovie).
3. Rebooting the Mac Book.
4. Reintalling iLive 11
5. Deleting the movie and creating a new one.
I had the problem a few week ago and it went away. Other movies in the library are wokring fine. I don't have a clue of what to try next.

Hey cagafromgbr!
Here is an article that can give you an overview of the different ways to import videos in iMovie:
iMovie (2013): Importing overview
http://support.apple.com/kb/PH14670
Thanks for being a part of the Apple Support Communities!
Regards,
Braden

Importing DVDs into iMovie

Can you take a DVD that has been created, and 'reverse' import it into iMovie?

* DVDxDV (free trial, 25$, Pro: 90$)
* Apple mpeg2 plugin (20$) + Streamclip (free)
* Cinematize >60$
* Mpeg2Works >25$ + Apple plug-in
* Toast6/7 allows converting to dv/insert dvd, hit apple-k
* connect a miniDV Camcorder with analogue input to a DVD-player and disk to tape/use as converter
non of these apps override copyprotection mechanisms as on commercial dvds...

Trying to import MP4 to iMovie

Alright, so I downloaded a video file from the internet, and the format is apparently MP4. But when I import it to iMovie, it doesn't show up in the event viewer. The event will be created for it, but there's nothing in it. I checked the folder in my iMovie folders, and the file was indeed copied. It just doesn't show up.
I googled this, and someone suggested re-encoding the file as an MP4 in Handbrake, because for some people, that made the file show up in iMovie, which I tried, but apparently Handbrake 0.9.3 doesn't like Leopard 10.5.7 because it keeps crashing just after I start the first encoding process.
Investigation on this revealed that Handbrake doesn't even recommend preparing movies for iMovie using Handbrake, because there's a lot of generational loss along the way. Fine. They recommended converting the file to DV with MPEG Streamclip, another program.
MPEG Streamclip didn't work. All I got was an error that said "Cannot prepare movie". Googling this didn't find me a solution to fix MPEG Streamclip, but DID reveal to me that QuickTime can export MP4's as DV files. So okay. Let's try that.
After exporting my MP4 to DV, and reopening it to check, all I get is a white screen. All the audio is intact. No video. I tried many options and settings and I keep getting the same output. All audio is fine. No video.
Can ANYONE help me get my MP4 file into iMovie?

I also experience this problem. My mp4 clips has been taken with a Samsung NV24HD camera and are HD (720p). I haven't tried to convert these clips but I think it should not be necessary since I can play them in quick time. However I have perian installed, perhaps that's why they play in quick time? The next question is then: Is there a similar plugin to iMovie?

Trouble Importing Photos into iMovie

I am trying to import photos into iMovie and am having trouble. They look like they are importing OK, and when the import is through (the red bar has finished loading) the picture disappears and the clip becomes blank. This is happening when I import from the finder, from iPhoto, or from FILE>Import, and with lots of different photo sizes, none seem to work. My iMovie project file is located on an external drive with tons of space. I have plenty of space of the startup disk, so I don't know why this is happening, and it was working fine a few days ago. Any ideas?

I had this problem last year (August-Sept 2007), and I'm having it again now (August 2008). When I import jpeg photos from iPhoto to iMovie, they turn black and are not accessible in iMovie. In addition, this time when I imported several photos, the replay of the iMovie became jerky. When I threw out the photos, the movie became smoother, the way it was originally. There seems to be some sort of bug that has not been fixed in over a year.

Is there any difference in importing movies to iMovie direct from memory card or first importing the movie to the hard drive?

Is there any difference in method:
1) importing movies directly from memory card (class 10) to iMovie
2) copying the content of the memory card to my hard drive and from there I import it to iMovie
I mean, is there any quality issues? The latter method is really much faster.

AndersD_Vasa wrote:
… I mean, is there any quality issues?
No.
The copy of the card is a 'bit-identical clone' - no difference to the 'original'.
Plus a superb method to back-up originals....
I copy all my original recordings first onto some hard-drive - SDcards are much to 'fragile' in my experience....

16:9 ratio and imported clips from iMovie 4

I have imported clips in iMovie 4 from a miniDV with 16:9 format. iMovie 4 compressed the ratio of the images but I have been able to export back to 16:9 format with Quicktime.
I now have stepped up to iMovie HD (5) so I can work in the 16:9 format but my previously imported clips still display in iMovie in the 4:3 format.
How can I change the imported clips to 16:9 ratio to edit and create my movie. Is it possible?
Thanks in Advance,
Christo

I've worked it out, here it is if anyone wants to know:
Open a new project in iMovie 5, source the media files from the previos project and drag them into the clips pane of iMovie. The clips import in the 16:9 ratio. Sweet.
All the clips are duplicated, so I import the clips a few at a time and delete the clips from the original media to manage disk space.
Christo.

Cannot import clips into imovie from samsung HMX-F80 camcorder

Hi there,
does anybody know how to import clips to iMovie from a Samsung HMX-F80 camcorder? It imports some old clips but not recent ones.
Thanks!

Hey cagafromgbr!
Here is an article that can give you an overview of the different ways to import videos in iMovie:
iMovie (2013): Importing overview
http://support.apple.com/kb/PH14670
Thanks for being a part of the Apple Support Communities!
Regards,
Braden

Importing MiniDV w/iMovie - Some bad Timecode

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for