iMovie not recording the full Digital8 Tape

Converting Digital8 video tapes from Sony TRV-310 via firewire. For the most part this works. Discovered that some video clips are completely dropped. There are no errors shown. The tape plays all the way through and I can see every video clip as it plays. When I review what was recorded then I start to notice whole chunks of video missing. This is alarming because I already went through 20 tapes and now I don't know if it really captured everything unless I play all 20, 2-hour tapes all over again!

macOS Monterey on MacBook Pro (15-inch, 2016). HD has over 130GB of free space.

MacBook Pro 13″, OS X 10.11

Posted on Dec 11, 2023 5:04 PM

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FlyinHawaiian84 Author

Level 1

4 points

Posted on Dec 11, 2023 5:30 PM

Update - I tried the QuickTime workaround (record from QuickTime Player). QuickTime capture DOES show an error and stops the capture so at least you know something when wrong. iMovie just keeps going and tells you nothing. I noticed that this clip that's having an issue doesn't fill the full frame for some reason. After a few seconds of playing this clip switches to fill the full frame. That's when QuickTime has the error and stops recording.

So, the root issue is with the original recording, perhaps degradation of sitting in a box for 20 years. Still think that if iMovie can see the video it should record and save it. With over 100 more tapes to convert, it may be easier to just use an analog conversion box. Analog would have inferior quality but at least it won't skip video clips.

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iMovie not recording the full Digital8 Tape

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