Problems importing DV video into iMovie?

It could be two things.

1.  From Little Dog WHICH MACBOOK??? I hope you don’t have a MacBook (made between October, 2008 and June, 2009) or MacBook Air – they have no firewire port and no way to add one. You alternative is to use a computer that has a firewire port.

MiniDV tape based camcorders require you to use firewire to import the video to a computer.

USB will not work – in your case, iMovie will not recognize there is DV-format video coming in over USB. Even if you somehow magically are able to get USB streaming to work, that video will be low-quality compressed video. High quality DV-format video needs to come over using firewire. USB is typically used only for transferring stills off the memory card (you discovered this).

Firewire, DV, i.LINK and IEEE1394 are all the same thing.

A USB-to-firewire cable/hub/adapter/converter won’t work either.

The camcorder should be powered off before connecting or disconnecting the firewire cable from the DV port. If powered-on, you run the risk of shorting the pins in the connector and blowing the firewire port.

The camcorder needs to be in Play mode – this is on the power switch.

Many Panasonics required the camcorder to be plugged into the AC power adapter when transferring video.

When the camcorder is connected to AC and firewire connected to the computer, launch iMovie. The first window that appears lets you name the video project file, selct the hard drive destination and the video format (needs to be at DV or DV widescreen – which ever is on that tape). Create. The blue “Camcorder connected” screen should appear. At the bottom of that window, use the rewind button to rewind the tape in the camcorder if necessary. When you are ready, click Import. This is a real-time activity. Ten minutes of video = ten minutes import time.
SAVE when the import is done.

Also – If you have a MacBook WITH a firewire port, that port needs to be ON (MacBooks made before October 2008 have a firewire port). To check: System Preferences: Network: Show – Network Port Configurations: be sure there is a check mark in “Built In Firewire”. If not, check  the box – and Apply Now. Quit the System Preferences…

2.  From Matt  – How to import, ,edit and export videos in iMovie

Are you having a problem with iMovie 08 and Snow Leopard?

It seems to stem from iMovie 08 trying to use the newer Quicktime that is default on Snow Leopard.  Just install the older Quicktime that is on the Snow Leopard Disk or available for download here. You can find more details in this thread if that doesn’t solve it.

Want to import MPEG files from Sony Handycam to iMovie and iDVD?

This post tells you how. Its pretty straightforward.  It is unfortunate that Apple doesn’t pay the cost for the MPEG2 license, but I can see that many people wouldn’t use that so it would probably hurt more than help.  Apple is very good in recognizing dead end technologies and moving on than other tech companies.

How to use iMovie 6 with iLife 09

Thanks Klaus1.  This is a good step by step on how to accomplish this.  You can read more at the apple discussion post here. Happily this is easily achieved, but it has to be done backwards.

1. Delete iLife 9. Now install iMovie 6 from the iLife install disks.
2. Now re-install iLife 9. This automatically moves iMovie 6 into a folder it creates in your Applications folder called iMovie Previous Version.
3. Now you have them both, and you can have both in the Dock as well.
4. Alternatively you could try this method, suggested by poster Uitech:
5. Open a terminal and type “touch /Library/Preferences/com.apple.iLife08.plist” (No quotes)
6. Install iMovieHD6.dmg (Formerly available from Apple).  This is said to work with both Leopard and Snow Leopard Macs.

iMovie ’09 & iDVD: The missing manual

Another great work.  Very helpful and gives you hope that you can create the same kind of fun animations you might have had in iMovie HD.  Read the Amazon reviews here.

Chi-town and iLife

What a great combo! Nice to see fellow Chicago people here.

How do I import .mts or .m2ts files into iMovie?

Looks like you have several suggestions in this thread.  Try this first:”

There are two types of files. .mts which is the native file on the Sony SR1 and .m2ts which is the file as it is converted (copied) onto your hard drive with the Sony Disk Utility that comes with the SR1, which is only windows based.

It looks like creating a disk image (.dmg) with the same file structure as the SR1 anyname.dmg -> AVCHD ->BDMV -> Stream -> *.mts will allow the loading of the native SR1 files.

But, I cannot get anything to work for the .m2ts files stored on my hard drive. Has anyone successfully loaded the .mt2s files into iMovie08 ?”

Thanks Mickey57!

iLife for the PC

Some thoughtful suggestions.  Also some other views of iLife.  Click here to read.