HV20 and iMOVIE

[newHV20]

I have a new HV20 and hooked it up to my MAC today to try to do some editing with iMOVIE.

*It wouldn't recognize the camera or detect it.* Any ideas why this is???

Do I need iMOVIE HD?? Update??

Any help is much appreciated.

[Karel]

First of all: did you connect the camera with an firewire cable and NOT the USB? If so, the Mac should recognise it.
And yes, you'll need the HD version to edit the HD output of your camera.

[newHV20]

First of all: did you connect the camera with an firewire cable and NOT the USB? If so, the Mac should recognise it.
And yes, you'll need the HD version to edit the HD output of your camera.

Yes I connected with FIREWIRE. Will it edit the clips with just regular iMOVIE even though it may not be HD or do I HAVE to have iMovie HD??

[aero]

Others would be much more knowledgable here, I'm a newbie myself to both video cams and iMovie. I can only confirm that iMovie HD has no problems picking off HD footage from the HV20.

Have you tried taking SD footage with your HV20 and then having iMovie (non-HD) capture it?

[tomasallan]

You may have to force your HV20 to output SD for the Regular iMovie

[newHV20]

You may have to force your HV20 to output SD for the Regular iMovie


Quick update here: I did have to force the camera to output SD and not HD. It then recognized the camera and all imported and edited well.
I guess the thing that sucks here is that you aren't able to have TRUELY HD videos unless played directly from camera to HDTV unless you want to pony up and spend the ~600 to get an HD or Blu-Ray burner......:hv20-smilie102:

[CJDaniels]

Quick update here: I did have to force the camera to output SD and not HD. It then recognized the camera and all imported and edited well.
I guess the thing that sucks here is that you aren't able to have TRUELY HD videos unless played directly from camera to HDTV unless you want to pony up and spend the ~600 to get an HD or Blu-Ray burner......:hv20-smilie102:

I have a Media Center Computer hooked to my entertainment system, holds all of my music and now all of my HD TV. No burner necessary.

[Karel]

I guess the thing that sucks here is that you aren't able to have TRUELY HD videos unless played directly from camera to HDTV unless you want to pony up and spend the ~600 to get an HD or Blu-Ray burner......

Or you can buy an AppleTV for $299 and have 720p, but the cheapest method is to write back the edited movie to your camera and play it from there.
iMovie does this flawlessly.

[Towny]

Quick update here: I did have to force the camera to output SD and not HD. It then recognized the camera and all imported and edited well.
I guess the thing that sucks here is that you aren't able to have TRUELY HD videos unless played directly from camera to HDTV unless you want to pony up and spend the ~600 to get an HD or Blu-Ray burner......:hv20-smilie102:

Or you can pony up the $79 and get iLife '06 or wait for iLife '07 to come out for $79. True, to get full HD on a DVD, you probably will need to burn to BluRay or HD DVD. But you can still burn to DVD and have 16:9 video. Or you can just watch the movies off your computer or camcorder.

[Bantymom]

I have both regular iMovie and iMovieHD. I turned on the latter and nothing happened. Should I try the SD?

[Gymnut808]

Bantymom, do you have the camera plugged in first, than launch iMovie? If so, try and disconnect the camera, launch iMovie, than plug in and turn on the camera.

[Bantymom]

Did as instructed: Computer on, iMovie launched, then turned on the camera and pressed play. Nothing but black. Checked my System Profiler. It only recognizes the Firewire Bus

[Gymnut808]

What about unplugging the 6-pin Firewire cable from your Mac and then go through the steps of launching iMovie, plug in cable, and then turn on the camera?

Edit: From past experiences, the System Profiler doesn't seem to live update new connection devices.

[Bantymom]

OH!!!!!

YES!!!!
:hv20-smilie77::hv20-smilie77::hv20-smilie77:

*does the happy dance*

Thank you so much!

Now, is there something I have to do to tell it to compress it when it sucks it off the camera? This is an hour-long video I need to edit.

[Gymnut808]

Glad that worked. Well, what is your intended output? For web? DVD? Back to tape?

Bear in mind, iMovie does not handle HDV natively so it will transcode, upon capture, to AIC(Apple Intermediate Codec), so the resulting files will be 3-4 times as large.

[Bantymom]

I will need to be able to get it onto a DVD. Unfortunately, the rest of what you said made no sense to me, except the part at the end. 3-4 times as large? I'm already concerned that importing the hour+ video won't fit on my computer.

I do have a 200 gig external drive for storage (where the heck did I put that thing?). Will that help me any?

[Gymnut808]

Ideally you'd like to use an external or secondary hard drive to capture your media to, leaving your internal hard drive to house your operating system and editing program. You should be able to set what hard drive you want iMovie to capture to in the iMovie preferences, if you do find your external hard drive. An hours worth of AIC should be in the neighborhood of 30-40GB.

I haven't used iMovie in years, but I see no reason why it shouldn't be simply a matter of capturing in the capture window and making your edits. If memory serves me correct, iMovie and iDVD work together fairly well and iMovie should be able to export your project to iDVD correctly.

Edit: On a side note, what did you record in? HDV(60i), PF24, or PF30?

[Bantymom]

ok, I hope you can be patient with me just a little longer.

How would using the external HD work?

It connects with a USB cable. Would that violate the "no other cable pugged in" rule?

do I need to put iMovie onto the external HD and make sure to open that version?

will the movie then go into the iMovie on the external HD?



Edit: On a side note, what did you record in? HDV(60i), PF24, or PF30?

lol, someone else recorded me, neither of us have a clue what we are doing. We just stuck in the little tape thing and pressed record. One miniDV took an hour of video, if that tells you anything.

[Gymnut808]

Some may disagree but you can use a USB 2.0 hard drive to edit on. Ideally you'd like to have a Firewire 400/800 drive to work from. There's really no defined rule of not having any other cables plugged in, as my desk can attest to the myriad of USB and Firewire cables I've got plugged into my MacBook Pro.

No, you would not have to install iMovie or an operating system onto the external hard drive, for that matter. It should be a simple matter of going into iMovie's preferences and setting the external hard drive as the drive you would like to capture to. I no longer have iMovie installed on my computer so I cannot tell you where exactly you need to go in iMovie to change this, but I can only imagine it would be in the iMovie preferences. Hope that helps.

[Bantymom]

Thanks. You've been quite a bit of help. I'll just have a go at it now and see what happens.

I caught your edit too late and answered it in my post above.

[Gymnut808]

Glad you got it sorted out. You can find out the record settings by having the camera set to "Camera", and by pressing the FUNC. button on the back of the camera, it brings up some menus. Use the joystick to toggle down to the MENU and press the joystick in to select it. The submenu you want is the second one down, REC/IN SETUP. In there, select "HD STANDARD" to find out what you're recording; I imagine that out of the box the HV30 should be set to HDV(60i), but that's only an assumption.

[Bantymom]

Thanks :)