Doesn't recognize JVC GR-DVM5

Hi Jimbo,

Welcome to iMovie Discussions.

Your cam SHOULD work with any version of iMovie (the beauty of miniDV). Possibly you are using the PC setting on your camcorder in trying to connect to the Mac? You must use the PLAYBACK mode to capture from your tapes.

Here's the routine. Cam is off, Mac is on. Connect the Firewire cable to both. Open iMovie and turn on the cam, set on PLAYBACK. iMovie should then recognize your cam and give you the import window.

Just in case, you must be using a Firewire cable, not USB, as others have made that simple identification mistake on these boards.

I have the JVC GR-DVF21U, and I can't get it to work with iMovie either. Same scenerio... it shows an "unknown device" under firewire on the System Profiler. When I attempt to import video, I get just a blue screen with the words, "Disconnected or Off" in the upper left corner even though the camcorder IS connected and IS turned on.

No one on these forums has a solution, and JVC is no help at all.

My brother has used this camera before and has no trouble getting video onto his pc. This seems to be one of the areas where Windoze outshines Apple. So find someone with a pc and have them burn the video onto a disk for you.

I also have the same camera, and the same problem.

I've connected the firewire cable as you suggest, and followed the order of your solution.

The blue window appears when I turn the camera to 'playback' and when I click 'Import' (on automatic) the tape is rewound to the beginning and playback commences for one or two seconds. It then stops and rewinds again.

On 'manual' mode I press 'play' on the camera and 'import' in iMovie but nothing is passed to the computer; the import screen remains blue and the on-screen timer stays at 0:00:00.

I've tried this using several tapes and using both my macmini and macbook pro with the same results.

Any more suggestions to get this working (I too have my whole life on tapes)?

Thanks,

Paul.

A little more detail...

I've looked in the 'firewire' section on system information which shows this about the device:

Unknown Device:

Manufacturer: 0x8088
Model: Unknown
GUID: 0x80880000687D95
Maximum Speed: Up to 100 Mb/sec
Connection Speed: Up to 100 Mb/sec
Sub-units:
Unknown Unit:
Unit Software Version: 0x10001
Unit Spec ID: 0xA02D

Does this help the diagnosis?

Paul.