iMovie 10.0.6 won't save my imported videos (from DV camcorder)

Question

iMovie 10.0.6 won't save my imported videos (from DV camcorder)

I am using this version of iMovie for the first time (I finally gave in and let 9 go), so maybe I'm missing something. I am trying to import some VHS tapes and I'm using a miniDV camcorder to convert to digital, something I've done a bunch in previous versions with no problems. The camcorder is connected with firewire to my MacBook. So in iMovie I click "Import". Here I can see and hear the tape when it plays. There is a message that says "Camera Not Controllable", which is expected. I click the blue import button down in the corner and the message changes to "Recording" with a counter for the time. All seems great. When I'm done I click "Stop Import", then "Close" and I'm taken back to the main iMovie window with the events list. But in the only event, where it should have been saving the video, there is nothing. I've tried this a bunch of times and created a new iMovie library on an external drive but nothing works. It never actually seems to save any video.

Am I doing something wrong? This is really frustrating!

Thanks,

Sean

MacBook Pro (13-inch Mid 2010), OS X Yosemite (10.10.2)

Posted on Feb 24, 2015 6:04 PM

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Answer 1

NoahJ

Level 1

0 points

Feb 24, 2015 10:26 PM in response to Sean C. Carter

I have this exact same problem. I found out that even though the camera footage shows up on the screen the camera itself is not supported and therefore will not record apparently. I found that a workaround is to record the video footage in Quicktime outside of iMovie. Then you can likely import the clips and do your editing. Frustrating when it was a one step process before... Not sure if this helps you, but I am not happy that this was the only workaround. Glad there is one, not happy that I had to resort to it.

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Answer 2

Feb 25, 2015 4:36 PM in response to NoahJ

Huh, seems really strange that it would be unsupported in the latest version all of a sudden. I'm using the same camera I've always used for this. I tried your suggestion of recording in Quicktime, but neither Quicktime Player nor Quicktime Player 7 Pro would even see the DV camcorder as a source, only the MacBook's built-in iSight. I wonder if I'm going to have to dig up iMovie 9 again to do this...

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Answer 3

Feb 27, 2015 7:03 PM in response to Sean C. Carter

I ended up pulling out an old archive copy of iMovie 9.09, but even that didn't work, it wouldn't see the camera. I started to suspect that it was less of an iMovie issue and more of an OS X issue so I installed 10.7 on a spare drive and tried it out there, worked great just like before! I would try iMovie 10.0.6 on a lower OS version to see if that's the problem but 10.10 is the minimum it will run on, so I guess I'm stuck with this setup in order to import the last of my tapes. Oh well, at least I'm back up and running.

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Answer 4

b28-ar

Level 1

9 points

Feb 28, 2015 4:59 AM in response to Sean C. Carter

I have exact same problem.

iMovie 10.0.6 won't save my imported videos (from DV Digital Video Camera JVC GR-D290E).

I have iMac 27" (end 2012), OS X Yosemite (10.10.2).

I tried to reinstall the previous version of iMovie 9. But the OS can not do it.

Note: At the other my MacBook4.1 (OS 10.5.8, iMovie 8.0.6) same operations are functioning normally.

What to do?

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