miniDV tapes to DVD

[curt00]

Herve or rumplestiltskin:

After I import the miniDV video with iMovie 6, am I correct to assume that there should be no issue with using iMovie 11 to use those imported clips to create and edit a movie for export to YouTube or other format? If I do this, am I correct to assume that iMovie 11 will not alter or degrade the quality of the imported clips?

I mentioned that the advantage of the iMovie 11 file is that the date and time of recording is put into the name of the files:

clip-2009-12-31 21;18;02.dv

Here's the name of the iMovie 6 file:

Clip 01.dv

I can get the date by right-clicking on the clip while inside iMovie 6. Therefore, I assume that there isn't much value in having the date and time in the filename?

[distinguish]

i think there muse be someone can replace it, so do not always mentioned the apple~ i fed up some times~

[Herve]

I just imported a clip from my miniDV tape with iMovie 6 and iMovie 11. Here are the file sizes:
iMovie 6: 467.6 MB
iMovie 11: 465.6 MB
They are very close in size. Doesn't this show that iMovie 11 maintains the miniDV quality?

wow thats very interesting, cant wait to hear what they have to say

…have to say? …nothing (DV has a fixed bitrate, if you convert a black screen to DV format, it takes the same size on disk than a conversion with a real rush and complex contents)

About this:
[QUOTE=zoranb;2075948]

Doesn't this show that iMovie 11 maintains the miniDV quality?

again: iMovie'08 (& +) does not like interlaced stream during export (not capture)

Last: iMovieHD convert to raw DV, others versions usually separate audio stream, like FinalCut do (that's mainly the reason for the size difference).
PS: A DV stream (fixed bitrate) already has "some place" for the audio stream inside itself (it is a format made for handle one video stream and one or two audio streams, inside itself)

After I import the miniDV video with iMovie 6, am I correct to assume that there should be no issue with using iMovie 11 to use those imported clips to create and edit a movie for export to YouTube or other format?

(again) no concern during capture (all versions keep the same quality)
About youtube export: you need to deinterlace to produce a compliant file with youtube, and iMovie'11 does it automatically for you (it will degrades quality, but deinterlacing is a need for youtube )

bye

[curt00]

Seven years ago, I recorded some videos with my Canon ZR miniDV camcorder. The read head on this camcorder is broken. So, I'm borrowing my brother's Sony Digital Handycam DCR-PC110 NTSC to play these video tapes.

When I use iMovie 6 to import, I get this message:

"The camera is sending half-sized frames, which iMovie can’t accept. Check your camera’s record mode (this is the setting that affects recording quality, which determines the total recording time on a tape). The mode must be set to “SP” or “LP.” If that doesn't help, try removing all the cables and batteries from the camera, wait a minute, replace them, and then reset the date, time, and record mode."

The recording mode is already set to "SP". However, I still cannot import. Every time I try to play the video, it shows a fraction of a second of the video and then it stops. If I disconnect the camera from the Mac, I can play the video without a problem. It seems that iMovie 6 will not allow me to play this video.

Does anybody know what the problem is?

With my brother's miniDV tapes, I don't get this problem on his Sony Digital Handycam.

From some research, I read that it might have something to do with playing a PAL recording instead of NTSC. However, my cameras are NTSC. I've never (consciously or remember to) use PAL. iMovie 6 is set to 29.97 bps frame rate, which is supposedly NTSC.

I tried this:
- I disconnected the camera from the Mac.
- Started up iMovie 6.
- Started playing my miniDV tape.
- Connected the firewire from the camera to the Mac

Now, I can play and import the miniDV video on iMovie 6. However, I'm curious as to whether iMovie is inputting NTSC and saving into PAL, or vice versa. Therefore, I'm concerned about the possibility of losing quality. Would anybody know if I will be losing quality?

(below added at 5:48 PM EST)

I found out something new.

I have two tapes with many clips on each. On the first tape, approximately the last 43 minutes of clips, cannot play well on my Canon camcorder. The video is filled with static, and there is no audio for the most part except for a repeating quick blip of a static sound. On the second tape, approximately the first 13 minutes of clips has this problem. When I took it to a camera repair store, they were able to play my tapes fine on their camera. They said that the read head is probably dirty and that there isn't anything wrong with the tapes.

The Sony Digital Handycam concurs as my tapes play fine on this camera.

I found out that I get the "half-sized frames" error from iMovie 6 when I'm trying to play or import these bad parts of my tapes. When I'm playing the other parts of my tape, I don't get the error. The error goes away when I do as listed above:

- Disconnect the camera from the Mac.
- Start up iMovie 6.
- Start playing my miniDV tape (on the Sony camera)
- Connected e firewire from the camera to the Mac

What's interesting is that, when I do this, the behavior of my tape has reversed. That is, the part of the tape that played well on my Canon camera, now cannot play and the bad part that had static on my Canon camera, can play and import.

Does anybody know what is going on?

[curt00]

(again) no concern during capture (all versions keep the same quality)

I got confused. I thought that using iMovie 11 to import will lose quality. I read this elsewhere as well. Are you saying that it will not?

About youtube export: you need to deinterlace to produce a compliant file with youtube, and iMovie'11 does it automatically for you (it will degrades quality, but deinterlacing is a need for youtube )

My main objective is to preserve quality when importing, to archive my miniDV videos. If in the future, I want to share the video, I assume that I can simply send the .DV files. If I want to edit the clips into a movie, by using iMovie, then should I do this with iMovie 6 HD or iMovie 11? What if I want to create a movie from the clips and share it on Youtube? Does it matter if I use iMovie 6 or 11?

[Herve]

I thought that using iMovie 11 to import will lose quality. I read this elsewhere as well. Are you saying that it will not?

mini-DV are infos on a tape, the application just filters them and write them to a file (the resulting DV file). There is no process by the application, there is no lose.
PS: I use FinalCutExpress for editing. Because I'm very lazy, I never finish to read the manual, so I continue to import all my videos from camcorder with iMovie (version '08 or '09). There is no quality lose during this step (but I give the resulting folder with all files to FCE to preserve informations )

My main objective is to preserve quality when importing, to archive my miniDV videos. If in the future, I want to share the video, I assume that I can simply send the .DV files. If I want to edit the clips into a movie, by using iMovie, then should I do this with iMovie 6 HD or iMovie 11?

depending on what you will do:
- a dvd-video from dv files? use iMovieHD
- internet broadcast from DV files? you can use iMovie'11
iMovieHD will preserve information, iMovie11 no
if your output format needs to suppress some informations (aka youtube), you can use safely iMovie11, if not… do not use it

bye

[curt00]

Herve and Rumplestiltskin:

Thanks for all of your help!

In the end, I'm going to use iMovie 6 HD to import my miniDV videos, because I can put them onto my NAS (Network Attached Storage). iMovie 11 allows you to put Events on an external hard drive, but not onto a NAS.

Hopefully, I will never have to use DVDs again. If I need to share my videos in the future, I will enable people get the .DV files through FTP to my NAS. Or, I will use iMovie 11 to create movies and put them onto Youtube. Thanks!

[curt00]

Herve or rumplestiltskin:

I successfully imported the good part of the miniDV tape using iMovie 6. Then I did this:

- Shut down iMovie 6
- Disconnect the camera from the Mac.
- Start up iMovie 6.
- Start playing my miniDV tape (on the Sony camera)
- Connected the firewire from the camera to the Mac

As mentioned before, this reverses the behaviour of the tape. The bad part is now playable. However, the button in iMovie 6 that used to say "import", now says "record with camera". I didn't want to do this because I wanted to use the "import" function that automatically starts a new clip at each scene break.

Therefore, I closed the project, created a new project and with the new project, the button says "import' again and I successfully imported the rest of the tape. Then I closed this second project.

I created a third project called "test" to see if I can drag clips from the first two projects, to merge the videos. I re-opened the first project with the imported clips from the good part of the tape. When I try to drag one of the clips to the newly created "test" project, I get this error message:

"iMovie HD quit unexpectedly.

Click Reopen to open the application again. Click Report to see more detailed information and send a report to Apple."

When I try to drag a clip from the second project to the third "test" project, I get the same error message.

Do you know what causes this and how to fix?