No clips when exporting project from iM4 to camcorder?

Question

No clips when exporting project from iM4 to camcorder?

Hello,

I haven't used iMovie in awhile, but I am fairly comfortable with it. Here's the problem, I have started working on an older project. I am importing footage from my older videos (8mm videocassettes). When you import these older videos they DON'T create clips, you just get one long clip, usually broken up by 9:28 (9 minutes, 28 seconds) segments - since this is the default setting (at least that's what it is on my Mac). Anyway, I then spend the time to MANUALLY separate the individual clips - creating the traditional clips that we are all used to working on with the modern cameras. In the end, I have hundreds of small, individual clips in my "time-line" that I can use to make my movie. I have always exported these clips back to my newer camera so that I have all of these old "clips" on a "miniDV" tape for archive and ease of use in the future.

The problem is that when I tried this today, I noticed that my exported movie did NOT separate into the clips that I have spent so long creating? It is just one big long 61 minute clip with NO BREAKS? I know that I have done this in the past, - many times. Like I said, it has been awhile since I have used iMovie (maybe a year or two), but has something changed? Is there a setting that I need to change or something like that? I just want to export my newly created clips to a miniDV?

Any help would be appreciated!

Lincoln

PS: I usually use iMovie 6, but when I import these older movies I still like iMovie 4 because it doesn't have the "non-destructive" editing feature. Like I said, when you import older footage you get these 9:28 long clips, and when you "split" each clip out to create the normal sized clips that you want, if you use iMovie6 you end up with the same hundreds of individual small clips, BUT each small clip is actually the ENTIRE 9:28 long! So you really drain your harddrive. Maybe I am doing something stupid here too, so if anyone has a better idea for working with the older videos I would LOVE to hear from you! (I still have about 5 years worth of older family videos on the 8mm videocassettes that I need to convert).

Posted on Oct 6, 2011 8:43 AM

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Answer 1

Klaus1

Level 9

52,749 points

Oct 6, 2011 9:53 AM in response to Lincoln Nymeyer

Why use the ancient buggy iMovie 4 when you have version 6??

In iMovie 6 you can set the clip length to whatever you like, which saves the apparent grief from non-destructive editing!

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Answer 2

Oct 6, 2011 6:26 PM in response to Klaus1

Hi Klaus1,

How do you set the clip length to whatever you want?

Let's say I have an hour of raw footage on the old 8mm videocassette. When I import it into iMovie, I get 6 clips that are 9:28 long (approx).

Using the first clip as an example, I open it and realize that there are multiple scenes ranging from birthday stuff to a soccer game. What I do now, is "split" off each "clip" from the original 9:28 clip, and I end up with 15 or 20 shorter clips - which look like the normal clips that you would get when you use a newer video camera, (i.e. each time you press the RECORD button on and off you create a new small clip).

What I have noticed it that each of these new, smaller clips are actually "copies" of the original 9:28 clip so now I have 30 clips X 9:28, and that it only the first of the six 9 and a half minute clips that I created!

Are you saying that there is a way to say that these new clips are actually only 30 seconds to a minute long without the "non-destructive" editing somewhere in the background using up large amounts of harddrive?

I love iMovie 6! And I would be happy to abandon iMovie 4. The only time I use it is when I am importing these older format movies.

Lincoln

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Answer 3

Klaus1

Level 9

52,749 points

Oct 7, 2011 2:03 AM in response to Lincoln Nymeyer

Before you start a new project in iMovie 6 you should go to iMovie Preferences/Import and check the following boxes:

Place clips in Timeline

Limit scene length to (I set it to 3 minutes but it is your choice)

Filter audio from camera

Do not check the other boxes.

In Preferences under General, check these boxes:

Automatically resize window to fit project

Extract audio when using Paste Over at Playhead

Snap to items in Timeline

Play sound effects when snapping (entirely optional!)

and set the correct frame rate: 25 fps for PAL, 29.97 fps for NTSC

These preferences will stay in force from project to project until you change them, but can't change in an existing project.

So, with each clip only 3 minutes long, the non-destructive editing only adds 3 minutes worth each time you edit.

And yes, you can set the clip length to only one minute, but that would be overkill IMO.

Many agree with me that the combination of iMove 6 and iDVD 7 is ideal, and unmatched by any later version of iMovie.

As for using large amounts of hard drive, yes, that is the nature of the beast. DV video takes up 13GB per hour, but that is how you get quality.

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