Problems transferring my mini DV tapes to Imovie. Slow and not working correctly

Question

I have an older Mac Book (early 2008) and I am transferring my mini DV tapes to Imovie.  I borrowed a camcorder from my brother and have been importing the videos over the course of a few days.  Although I have plenty of storage, every command I made would take 5-10 minutes.  When the downloads were complete, I noticed the video either didn't come out (1 second clips) or they didn't come out well at all (screeching sounds, skipping, etc.) even though when I played the tapes on the camcorder, they worked fine.
I am in the process of improving my RAM from 2 GB to 4 but it's not fixing the problems I'm having with the transferring of the video tapes.
I want to manipulate these videos in Imovie (of my kids when they were babies) so i can create a mini-movie out of them.

Answer 1

Scene detection normally works, so there must be something going on with you old camera.
I have a bunch of old analog 8MM tapes that I imported through a DV 8MM Digital camera. These all came in as 1 long clip.
It is true you can delete a frame and then use iMovie to split the events. However, I have found a much quicker way that is non-destructive and allows you to enter the date metadata.
1) Download and install MPEG Streamclip from Squared 5. You can google it.
2) Drag your long clip into MPEG Streamclip. (If you don't know where it is, Right-click on the clip in the imovie event and select "Reveal in FInder".
3) Think if dividing your long clip into Events (everything you shot on a single day, for example) - and Scenes (clips) - an individual unit of footage within the Event.
4) Move the MPEG Streamclip playhead to the beginning of the 1st scene and press I for in point. Movie the Playhead to the last frame of the scene and press O for out point.
5) Now, FILE/EXPORT TO DV. Save it to a location you can easily find, like a folder on your desktop. Give it name in the following format: clip-yyyy-mm-dd hh;mm;ss.dv This will preserve the time metadata for later when you are editing. You may want to have your camera handy so you can easily see this data.
6) Repeat this process until you have all clips done. You should find that the playhead is still at the out point. You can simply type I and you have set the in point for a totally nondestructive capture of the next clip.
7) Finally, open iMovie and use FILE/IMPORT/MOVIES... and navigate to the place where you saved all these clips. iMovie will import and sort into Events (you may have to check "split days into new events". Let it generate thumbnails and you are done.