Copying VHS tapes to Hard Drive for editing in iMovie

How are you connecting the device to your Mac and what hard drive are you capturing to? How much free space is on that drive and how is it formatted**?

-DH

** Should be formatted as "Mac OS Extended" (aka HFS+).

Has it ever worked properly before? If so, what upgrades to software or hardware have you made since it last worked?

-DH

Were there any drivers or other software for the device that he installed on his system that you haven't?

-DH

It shouldn't matter ... but sometimes it can. Try testing this: unmount and disconnect the external drive and see if it allows you to capture a few clips to the boot drive without any problems. If that works, it may mean that the device doesn't like to share the Firewire bus with other Firewire devices.

-DH

which version of iMovie are you using...?

ISCL wrote:
'09

older versions of iM allowed a manual set of the socalled 'scene detection':
any brake in the timecode indicates 'new scene'.

VHS with its tons of analogue 'noises' AND a converter-box, from which nobody can tell hwo it handles such disturbances .. I assume iM09 gets hickups due to these interferences..

if your converter has any kind of 'Timecode converter/enhancer/...' .. use this.
if you own any miniDV camcorder with an analogue-in: transfer VHS to miniDV, import from there.

-Power everything off.
-Make sure all your connections are correct: a/v from your VCR to the Miglia ... FW from the Miglia to your iMac. Make sure the Miglia is the ONLY FireWire device connected to your iMac. No other FireWire devices should be connected.
-Turn on the Miglia. Make sure it is in NTSC mode; toggle it to NTSC if necessary. Then turn it off. Wait 10-15 seconds. Then turn it on again (required when you change between PAL and NTSC).
-Turn on your VCR, with a tape ready to play.
-Then boot your iMac.
-Start up iMovie.
-Make sure your iMovie Preferences show New Project Frame Rate = 29.97 fps (NTSC) - not 25 fps (PAL).
-Create a new iMovie project.
-Start your VCR playback BEFORE you begin capturing in iMovie.

Let us know if this solves the problem.

As long as the converter (the Miglia box) is on & connected, it generates the necessary signals. There should never be any timecode breaks with a converter like this even if the VHS player stops playing or there is noise in the analog video.