Using Sony HDR-HC3 HDV Hanycam with iMovie

Rick,

Yea, I now am in business! Thanks so much for your suggestions. Going through them pointed me to the reason I couldn’t get things to work. First off, I’ll answer the questions you asked. (Just in case someone else runs into ‘my’ problem.)

I purchased a new G5 IMAC 20/2.0/SD CTO with the following options:

Graphics Card: ATI Radeon K1600-128MB SDRAM
Memory: 2GB 667 DDR2 SDRAM-2x1GB
Operating System: OSX V.10.4

Orignally, when I tried to import video from my Sony HDR-HC3 using HDV I was able to get to the point where when I clicked the import button on the iMovie screen, the camcorder would start to play. Nothing would show up in iMovie except the clock of the video. The screen on the camcorder DID show the video being played. I could stop the video and rewind it from the iMovie screen.

Then, as you suggested, I took some video that had been shot earlier as DV and was easily able to import that into iMovie. (This gave me the hope to continue!) Next I started rechecking all my settings. Things looked fine from the camcorder standpoint and I hooked up the firewire. Then I noticed in another note in the forum that the camcorder should appear in the camera list pull down on the iMovie screen and I should be able to select it. When I looked, there were only 3 options available: DV-VCR, Built in iSight and Time Lapse. (The DV-VCR had remained checked from when I had selected it to import in DV mode.) Since I couldn’t see any other viable option I just unchecked DV-VCR. With nothing selected I was then able to import. Go figure… Noli

Noli, glad to hear you got it working. It's interesting you unchecked the camera, as I have to explicitly check it (I should have mentioned that). Have fun! -- Rick

Hi everyone,

I was going a little crazy the other day trying to get my new Sony HC3 to work with iMoive 6. I am kind of used to the simple plug and play that Apple is famous for. But since purchasing the New fully loaded Macbook Pro with the intel dual processer it appears I had hit a snag.

After reading through the forums and jumping to an uncountable amount of Web sites to get my computer to recognise the HC3. I finally found a fix that worked for me.

All I did was go into my menu settings of the camera and set the "Date/ Time" to my Macbook Pro. The computer immediately recognised the HC3.

Hope this helps others with the same problem.

Terry

..I-n-t-e-r-e-s-t-i-n-g..

I hadn't had problems importing HD, but when I get home (..am on holiday..) I'll see just what difference having incorrect time on the camera's clock makes to importing clips..

<thinks> If the camera thinks it's Tuesday the 29th and it's actually Thurs 31st on the Mac's clock, will the Mac refuse to import..?

I read a thread in here somewhere and it had a link to the Apple support page and it discussed the time in the Camera needs to be correct or it may not be seen by the computer.

When I opened iMovie HD 6 and the HC3 was connected the drop down box where you either select the iSite or your connected camera. I clicked on that and it said that my (camera not supported)

I changed the time code in the camera and reconnected it and it worked immediately as if there was no problem.

See how you go.

The HDV quality i am getting from my HC3 is very bad (grainy and some pixelation). Could this also be a focus issue?

On my LCD HDTV, regular TV through component cables from the cable box looks very grainy (looks slightly blurry through a TV cable), but HD broadcasts and DVDs--including those from the HC3, iMovie and iDVD--are much better. If you're talking about outlines around objects, that could be from over-sharpening. You can adjust this in the sharpening item in the camera set of the camera/tape menu. Things that are out of focus should just appear soft, not grainy. If you're viewing the image directly from component or HDMI from the camera, it will be slightly softer than true HDTV, though better than DVD, because HDV is 1440, not 1920, pixels wide, but I wouldn't expect that should make it grainy.

I presume you're importing it into iMovie as an HDV project. If you're editing them as regular DV projects and viewing them from DVDs on a large screen TV, that could make your HC3 video look chunky and pixelated.

Hope that helps.

Thanks, the sharpening item was set to high. i am importing 1080 HDV into iMovie project that is alao 1080 HDV. i am importing in real time using iMovie to control the camera. Is this right? I am reading how it takes people 2 or 4 times real time to import HDV? Am i importing the data wrong?