Transferring from Comcast DVR to iMovie

I would recommend that you take a look at the ElGato EyeTV Hybrid and the ElGato EyeTV HD.

What did you find that would not work?
Unless your documentary is on an encrypted channel like HBO, it should work.

To know for sure, you could check the forums at EyeTV and ask for people with real world experience with the Turner Channel on comcast.

Personally, I am getting really good 1080i recordings through the EyeTV Hybrid over a rabbit ears antenna. This would not help you with a cable channel, obviously. The EyeTV Hybrid will hook up to the outputs of a DVR and record non-encrypted channels, but only in standard definition. The EyeTV HD is supposed to be able to work with premium HD content. The forums might put you in touch with someone who is using it as you would.

The EyeTV software is good for getting material to iMovie. My signal contains all the closed captioning information and metadata about the program. However, I can share the file to iMovie using a preset, and it will create a simple h.264 file without the extra tracks.

Message was edited by: AppleMan1958

It should be a simple matter of attaching the DVR to your machine with a firewire cable, hitting 'play' on the DVR, and 'record' in iMovie or something else. iMovie will probably not be able to control your DVR itself.

If that doesn't seem to work, try DVHSCap from the Firewire SDK:
http://developer.apple.com/hardwaredrivers/download/

You will have to create a free developer account. Look for the Firewire SDK. In it is an app called DVHSCap, which is a bare-bones capture app. I use it to capture when there are otherwise problems.

Do you know if this solution - direct FW connection of the DVR and a MacBook running iMovie '06 HD - will work? I can remember a thread a while back in which someone said that the digital data coming from the DVR needed to be converted to analog before iMovie could accept it for input. I'm a little confused.

I have a Scientific Atlanta Explorer 8240HDC DVR. I used to run DVR content through a Sony camcorder (composite cable to A/V jack on the camera) to convert digital to analog and then pass it to the MacBook via a USB connection. Of course the output in iMovie HD wasn't hi def, but it worked. Unfortunately, the camera bought it and all the new cameras I've seen don't have pass-through capability, so I need to find some other alternative. So far all I've been able to input without the camcorder is iChat video from the laptop's built-in camera.

Sounds like you are 90% of the way there. It might be easier to capture as you did and resynch the audio than to completely revise your approach. I doubt that iMovie will change things; DVHScap is, as I understand, the same engine that iMovie uses to capture.

Something like VideoPier captures differently; it might work better.