iMovie and Microscope

I am trying to record directly from a microscope into iMovie.

I use a microscope that records in mpeg 2 (Zeiss). I am able to connect it directly to my macbook through a Firewire. iMovie 10.0.6 sees it and picks it up as a device. I can see the microscopic image on my iMovie screen. However, when I press import, I get a message at the top right corner saying "No data detected from device" and although the timer on the left side of the screen is going no file is being generated.

Older versions of iMovie on an old macbook pro are able to record it directly and make thumbnails of the video that I can edit but on our updated apple products, it no longer works at all.

Our tech support from Zeiss suspects that a direct converter of some sort is needed but they cannot help further. I tried the typical file converters but they all require to have an actual file to convert and do not do it "live".

Anyone has any experience with this? Ideas on what I can try?

Thanks

Tam MJ