mini dv tapes not importing until the end

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Level 1

10 points

mini dv tapes not importing until the end

I have been having a weird issue involving importing mini-dv tapes with home video footage. It appears to be importing the whole thing as I watch it play through to the end of the tape, and then that message appears saying it has imported all the footage successfully. But afterwards when I look at the clips it has imported, there are often several missing from the end (usually somewhere between five-fifteen minutes from the end of the tape). This hasn't happened on all of them, but has happened on at least a few of the eight tapes I've tried so far.

I've tried setting the tape from near the point where it left off and then importing, and for one tape it did import all the remaining clips into a new event. But in most cases where I've tried this so far, after I watched it appear to import until the end of the tape again and getting the successfully imported all footage message again, it only imported a few more clips from that point and still didn't reach the end.

Some of the tapes are old (up to about eight years in age), so perhaps this might have to do with the quality of the tape and iMovie is rejecting the footage or something? But the quality of the footage that does successfully appear after importing is pretty good for the most part, and when I watch the footage just playing the tape on the camera itself, it looks fine. Or maybe the clips are there in iMovie somewhere but I'm just not seeing them? But I don't know why I'd be able to see some and not others or why they'd be separated.

I suppose it is also possible that it is not importing clips from other parts of the tape too besides just the end (or selectively importing throughout the tape), but I'm not sure if I've noticed an example of that yet or have looked closely enough to see if every clip is there throughout the whole tape. For now, it appears to be more of an issue with the latter part of the tape. I'm not much of an expert on iMovie or any of this. Any other ideas what this could be or what else I could try?

I am on a 2013 Macbook Pro, using a firewire to thunderbolt adapter, on Sierra 10.12.2 and iMovie 10.1.4, more than 150 GB of available storage, importing from a Panasonic PV-GS80. Thanks.

MacBook Pro with Retina display

Posted on Jan 18, 2017 8:25 AM

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Answer 1

201jg

Level 1

4 points

Jan 23, 2017 12:54 PM in response to Jim Wanamaker

I have the same issue. An Apple "Genius" mentioned the Quicktime workaround. In addition to i-Movie not importing DV tapes completely, my audio & video also were out of sync, not at the beginning of the tape, but after about 10 minutes. Scaling down my Audio MIDI setup to match my old camcorder seemed to fix that, but not sure. Never had either problem with i-Movie prior to this past November's upgrade. The question now is whether to wait for an Apple fix, or look for another video editor. Any recommendations?

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Answer 2

fine0023 Author

Level 1

10 points

Jan 25, 2017 6:03 AM in response to 201jg

I also have the same problem with the audio and video being out of sync. That was my other main issue besides not getting all the clips imported. I don't know what you mean by scaling down audio MIDI setup to match olde camcorder?

At this point, I think I will try to import the tapes into something other than iMovie like Quicktime or trying a free trial of Final Cut Pro like the other poster suggested. Someone else also suggested Premier Pro to me, but I'm not too familiar with any of these.

I'm not looking to do anything fancy or even much editing at all (other than deleting a few clips in their entirety), so if something else can do the job of importing perhaps I don't need iMovie at all. I did like how iMovie separated all the clips automatically upon importing because many of my clips are very short in length, but maybe they all do that? Basically, I'm just looking to store this footage on my computer and probably some type of external drive rather than on tapes for long term storage purposes.

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Answer 3

201jg

Level 1

4 points

Jan 25, 2017 7:15 AM in response to fine0023

On the audio, my old camcorder (in 12 bit mode) samples audio at 32,000. My Audio MIDI Setup (just find it in Spotlight), was sampling at 44,000, but could be scaled back to 32,000. It seemed to fix the sync issue, but now I'm not sure. Agree on not really needing Final Cut Pro. Importing through Quicktime may work. I'm also looking at a 3rd party converter from Elegato. Once imported, I believe, it will be possible to edit in i-Movie.

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Answer 4

201jg

Level 1

4 points

Jan 29, 2017 12:16 PM in response to 201jg

As an update, the Quicktime workaround works. It's annoying to have the extra steps to get it into i-Movie, but it imports the entire tape, and in sync. Unfortunately, whereas i-Movie used to automatically detect scene breaks, QT does not, so unless you want to manually operate the camcorder, and save as distinct imports, it imports as one long file. If, like me, you have several different events on a single DV tape, it makes it a little more complicated to edit. So it goes unless, or until, Apple fixes the bug. Not the biggest issue, but comments to Apple.com/feedback might get them to address it. Just saying.

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Answer 5

fine0023 Author

Level 1

10 points

Jan 30, 2017 4:40 AM in response to 201jg

That's the one thing I was hoping Quicktime would still do was separate the clips automatically. Having it imported as one long file is going to make editing out the clips I wanted to delete much more laborious. But still, it would beat the issues I'm having with iMovie such as not even having all the footage imported and the audio video sync problems.

Anyone know if another option such as Premiere Pro would detect all of the separate recordings on one tape?

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Answer 6

Jan 23, 2017 3:14 PM in response to 201jg

If Quicktime doesn't meet your needs you might want to try Final Cut Pro X. There is a free trial available at https://www.apple.com/final-cut-pro/trial/

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Answer 7

Jan 18, 2017 8:34 PM in response to fine0023

This issue has come up several times with no posted solution I have seen. The general work around is to import using Quicktime player and then import into iMovie,

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Answer 8

201jg

Level 1

4 points

Jan 30, 2017 3:45 PM in response to fine0023

As an update, on some tapes, QT stops importing when it detects a scene break, but not all the time, and even though it stops importing, the tape keeps playing until stopped on the camera. Annoying.

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