Importing older tapes

I have a Sony Digital8 Handycam. I have video tapes made on this handycam and tapes made on an earlier 8 one. I have noticed that I can't import to imovie video made on my previous handycam. When I select import via imovie it sees the hanycam ie response to the play, stop, FF, and Rev, but does not import.
Any suggestions to get the video to import?
TCW

I too have a Digital 8 camera and I had the same issue as you did and I got mine to work by fluke.
1. plug a VCR into the inputs on the Digital 8 camera.
2. make sure the camera is set-up to let the signal pass thru it to iMovie 08.
3. hit "play" on the VCR and iMovie should recognize the signal and start to upload.
4. now with a non-digital 8 movie loaded in the camera, hit "play" on the camera and then hit "stop" on the VCR and the camera signal should take the place of the VCR signal.
5. I did this a couple of times and by the 3rd time there was no need to even use the VCR signal anymore and iMovie 08 recognized the non-digital 8 tape signal all by itself and I haven't had an issue since.
......as I said, it worked for me for some reason so its worth a shot if your looking for a solution
good luck.

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No date importing older tapes

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First, I love lightroom. I've been knee deep for 2 weeks and am over 33,000 photos as of this writing.
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ok, deleted all the problem images from the catalog and it is much more stable. I tried crashing it, and it held firm. This is very encouraging.
Took a look at the suspect files and folders.
Did what you said, copied into the folder, and then imported without doing anything, they came in fine.
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Living and learning, when importing thousands of images in hundreds of folders, I should have added the step of looking into each folder before importing. I didn't do this. I only looked at the previews in Lr import. When I went back in and looked in the folders, there are several junk files, thumb creation files from other browser programs, html files, other various files, etc. Lr skipped the majority of these junk files, but a few came in and actually caused Lr to crash immediately when the came into view on my monitor.
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The way I did it, I imported a lot of low res cropped that I used for web and email, and now they are in my Lr catalog and look like duplicates.
Now that the former prob images are in the Lr dbase, should I try and rename?

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HI ALL--FIRST TIME POSTING LONG TIME READER!
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You are getting the opposite of my problem. For me, newer CDs give problems not older ones. There are several options available. No particular order, not all options.
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Why does iMovie stop importing my tape from the camcorder even though it says it is still importing?

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The canopus advc 110 will work IF you have a perfect tape.
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http://www.grassvalley.com/products/advc300
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Hi
Help - No I've not got iMovie'13 v.10
But a thought.
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Hello, all.
I have a small problem that I hope somebody can help me with: I currently have an ADS Pyro A/V unit. I was told my the local Apple dealer that would be the best way to import VHS tapes into iMovie. It has worked for a few tapes, but now does nothing except give me a static-greenish-loud-high pitch sound when I try to import a tape.
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I have the same situation as the original poster (VHS tapes I want to edit and store on DVD).
However I don't have a CamCorder.
What I do have is a PVR that I have used to capture the video and I can write that to a DVD. That gives me the base video that I can work on.
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Ultimately I want to bring the image into iMovie, edit it and then burn it back onto a DVD. I don't really care if the intermediate files are large, but I am a little concerned about loosing picture quality (which is not great to start with - the original images were on recorded on Super-8 movie film, then 'projected' and recorded onto the VHS tape of which I have a copy. However it is all I have!!!)
What is the best format (and if necessary, tool) to copy the .VOB files to - something that iMovie can use without conversion preferrable - and then write back to a DVD.
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Susan
(PS in case you haven't gathered, I'm new to all this side of things, but I have time and a strong desire to learn!)

Importing VHS tape into iMovie.

I am importing VHS tapes into either imovie 09 or 06. When I play back in the program, it has good quality. But when I save it, no matter what format: mp4, .avi, .mov, etc. The quality is very poor when played back on DVD player.
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I am importing VHS tapes into either imovie 09 or 06.
Use iMovie 06 with iDVD 09.
iMovie 09 and 11 uses 'single field processing' meaning every other horizontal line of the video is thrown out, which reduces the sharpness of the footage. iMovie 06 uses ALL of the image to form the video.
Your workflow is editing DV clips and making DVDs, so iMovie 06 is better suited. Your movie will arrive at iDVD in DV format, which is an ideal match for making a DVD: same resolution, same pixels aspect ratio, and original quality. If you share your movie from iMovie 09, it gets re-rendered at 640x480 or less, and then iDVD upscales it back to 720x480. The end result is obviously not as good.
iMovie 06 and iDVD 09 is a "lossless" combination.

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Hello everyone,
First time I need to importe HDV tapes, frames recorded on HDV1080i 50i. I use a Sony HDV camera recoder, plug in with an firewire 800.
I set everything as it must be, then when I open the listed and capture the preview is black and when I start to capture it's says something like "missing of datas from the device, check the connections".
Do I need a special firewire cable for HDV images? Cause It works if I want to import some DVcam frames...
Please Help!! Just rent the camera for few days for import tapes...

Also, I have found that the WAY HDV is logged has a big effect as to how easily it can be captured - I used to constantly get the same warning you do. I started to mark my in and out points "on the fly" meaning the tape was rolling (NOT paused) while setting in and out points. Since doing it this way, I have yet to get that warning again. I imagine that it must have something to do with the GOP nature of HDV, but I'm not sure... I can use the same camera and cables to log and capture DV (paused) without an issue. As soon as I switch to HDV, the warning reared it's ugly head unless logged on the fly.

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Project I am working on is a Dutch feature film 24fps shot all over the world on RED.
Except for the Indian part - which was shot on HDCam. Today I started to try and capture these tapes and I have not been able to do it right - and it's night now. I am kinda desperate.
They assured me they shot the material at 24fps. So I set the J-H3 System Frequency to 24 and Monitor frequency to 48hz. I had no image. Then monitor frequ. set to 60hz. No image.
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FCP X automatically splits imported tapes into their individual clips and there is no simple way of preventing this.
The clips will be listed in the order in which they were shot which is fine if you are importing a tape that is exactly how it was shot in the camera.
However, if you have edited a video, putting clips in non-chronological order and then export it to tape, FCP X will return those clips to the chronological order in which they were shot .......... which jumbles up your edited project.
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Thanks - Rick

Hi
No it doesn't work like that - iMovie looks at the tape and reads the TimeCode and when it finds a break it starts a new clip. So it doesn't analyze the picture or audio to do this - and in analog material as VHS, Video-8 or Hi8 - there is no timecode at all after it's been converted to digital via A/D-box or Camera with Video-through function.
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and
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Yours Bengt W

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When I import an hour long sd tape, I get 100s of clips with many out of sequence.

FCP X automatically splits imported tapes into their individual clips and there is no simple way of preventing this.
The clips will be listed in the order in which they were shot which is fine if you are importing a tape that is exactly how it was shot in the camera.
However, if you have edited a video, putting clips in non-chronological order and then export it to tape, FCP X will return those clips to the chronological order in which they were shot .......... which jumbles up your edited project.
There is no cure other than to recapture with FCE or Legacy FCP.

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Importing older tapes

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