Apple Event: May 7th at 7 am PT
Hey Guys
Have been trying to sort this problem for ages. I have a samsung mini dv camera I have used to copy home movies to my computer. Recently had to buy a new iMac and of course, it has no firewire. SO, I've bought the firewire to thunderbolt adaptor and while iMovie is now seeing what the camera is playing - the playback is patchy and blotchy. Any ideas?
iMac, OS X Yosemite (10.10.2), iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, Late 2014
So NOBODY has a solution for me? 😕
I'm not sure what you mean exactly by " the playback is patchy and blotchy". Is this when you playback the saved video file from your computer after importing into iMovie or playing the file using Quicktime player?
All I can say is that I have a an Apple thunderbolt to firewire adaptor which works fine and at the expected speed with an external hard drive. I don't have a dv camera though.
Geoff.
I mean playback from the iMovie recorded using the firewire/thunderbolt adapter is pixelated and chopped up. Original tape is fine.
I'm afraid I don't have any experience using dv cameras and can't really help further. It might be due to software differences between the new and old macs rather than the firewire adaptor.
Can anyone else help?
Geoff.
Thanks Geoff. Can't believe nobody else has experienced this.
I just went through this myself. Before I upgraded to Yosemite it was working and I read elsewhere that the latest OS doesn't like to work with Analog tapes. You didn't clarify but I was converting Analog to Digital through various components I had used previously.
After several attempts, what I ended up doing was installing iMovie HD (6) on my machine. When I tried to open it I got a warning that I couldn't run this software on this OS but you can by-pass that. Right click the iMovie HD application icon (instead of double-clicking to open) and select 'show contents'. Navigate down through the folder structure until you see another iMovie HD icon and double-click that. It by-passes the warning message and works great.
I'm now dumping many old tapes onto my machine. I plan to use the resulting .dv files (located under the Movies/Media folders) to edit/use in iMovie 10.
Good luck - hope this helps!!
Hi Reidei! I took my dv camera to work to try it on that iMac that's not on yosemite yet and has an older version of iMovie. It worked no problems using the thunderbolt adapter. Tried it on the newer version of iMovie and it started pixelating and skipping again. So it's the new version of iMovie that is the problem. Thanks for your suggestion - think that's the answer.
So it's the new version of iMovie that is the problem.
You have discovered why so many continue to use iMovie HD 06. ( Still available on Amazon as part of iLife 06.)
I used iMovie 11 (9.0.9) - worked a treat. 10.0.7 would not work using the firewire to thunderbolt adapter.
Firewire to Thunderbolt adaptor works... sort of?
