What video codec does iMovie use to capture from a Digital8 tape?

I have no idea if this is what you are looking for, but I have some digital tapes that i imported in iMovie, and it says Codec: DV/DVCPRO - NTSC, Linear PCM.

roger

Digital8 is the DV codec recorded to Hi8 tape so when you capture via FireWire you should get DV. I have tons of Digital8 and I plan to try it out tonight.

In my case the Digital8 holds Video8 and Hi8 tapes that I transferred. I'm not sure if you have the same situation when you say " one hour" tapes.

I suspect a 1hour tape is going to nasty to skim through in an Event. Need to try it.

But, the real issue is one would like to split it into clips, which you can't do!

One possible option is to use iMovie 6 which can split long clips, but it has been so long since I used it I'm not sure what happens when one splits clips. Ideally they will go back into the Bin as a new clip and then you could import the entire Bin with all clips in an iMovie Event. My guess is this will not work!

So the other choice it to use fce or fcp to import and make sub-clips into a Bin and then export this Bin and then re-import into iMovie. Now the question to be asked is why do I want my clips in iM09? Why not simply edit in imovie 06, fce, or fcp? The answer is because skimming makes it EZ to located shots in 10 hours of video!

The desired clips will get tossed into a project and exported via XML back to fce or fop for editing to avoid quality loss.

What we need is iMovie 09 not to hurt DV or we need a way to split clips in an Event or we need fce/fop to offer skimming.

Were there a way to drag split clips from a project back into an event, this would work too. But, I've never found a way.

Anyone found a simpler solution?

PS: there are nles that will auto-split on scene changes, but not for os x.

That is exactly what it should day.

So far vie found dropping a single clip into the iMovie HD viewer and playing and tapping apple-T both splits the clip and moves the split clip into the Bin. Very nice. If you want to delete a split away clip select it in the
Bin and tap delete.

I suspect that there is a better way to delete the clip previous to tapping T.

In theory if you drop nothing into the timeline, only the clips should come into an Event.

Warning, apple docs say clips you drag into the iMovie HD bin will not be transferred. That's true. But, clips you import as a DV file don't move either. Looks like you must capture from a camcorder!

More later.

but I don't want any quality loss.

iMovie 09 is a wonderful program assuming that you're using it for what it was designed to do, assemble simple videos to share on the Internet.

There is a significant regresssion in quality of the image between iMovie 06 and 09.

I did a compare one day using the same clip burned to DVD from iMovie 06 and from iMovie 09.

The iMovie 06 clip looked like it came from the DV camera directly and the iMovie 09 clip looked worse. The difference is the single field processing used by iMovie 09 and the fact that it throws out every other horizontal line.

I have spent many hours trying (and re-trying) all the iMovie 09 quality "work arounds" but my DVDs never look as good as when I use iMovie 06 with iDVD 09. With iMovie 06 you don't have to "work around" anything, you always get a lossless result, with very little effort.

iMovie 06 and iDVD 09 is a 100% "lossless" combination and my DVD's DO look like they came from Hollywood!

1) scratch iMovie HD to split up you long clips. No matter how you did, the result is the entire clip comes in iMovie 09.

2) the watt I'm going is to use fop to capture the entire tape. Then as you playback the tape you mark each transition. Now you make sub clips of each section between marks. I'm hoping to use Automator to do this fast. Lastly, you batch export to a codec that preserves all resolution and color and interlace, but one which iMovie 09 thinks is progressive.

Edit using all the features of iMovie 09 and export as DV50 that preserves all resolution and color and interlace,

Absolutely no quality is lost in iMovie 09! Don't let this myth force you into using iMovie HD for editing. With hour long tapes you'll find the imovie hd Bin so full of clips you'll never find what you need! Use skimming in iMovie 09! And, unlike iMovie HD you never have to render effects!

Lastly, import the DV50 file into iDVD and you'll have a perefect DVD!

Likely, you don't have fcp, so you'll have to use the method I detail in my book that works on long clips. Remember, if you do this, you still must convert each captured clip to a codec that preserves all resolution and color and interlace, but one which iMovie 09 thinks is progressive. If you don't do this your DV will suck as Ziatron reports.

The key is to trick iMovie 09 into not seeing anything interlaced--even if it really is!

"2) the watt I'm going is to use fop to capture the entire tape. Then as you playback the tape you mark each transition. Now you make sub clips of each section between marks. I'm hoping to use Automator to do this fast. Lastly, you batch export to a codec that preserves all resolution and color and interlace, but one which iMovie 09 thinks is progressive."

I've written a nice Automator workflow that takes a timeline fill of marks into a nice group of files to be imported into imovie 09. First, REGECT those that are bad. Then select FAVORITES and start editing.

Steve, you must not be using Digital 8. iMovie splits DV or Digital 8 between scenes, or when you hit record.

However, if you are passing analog or Hi8 through a DV camera, it will not know how to split the clips.

Also, if you are imported a rendered quicktime movie in DV, it will not split the clips.

For analog source like this, MPEG Streamclip is a real easy way to split the clips.

Message was edited by: AppleMan1958