Sony Digital8 analog capture impossible in imovie (and FCP?)

[MRDlondon]

In an earlier posting (27th Dec.) I described a capture\camera recognition problem when using a Sony Digital8 camera to playback old analog 8mm tapes. imovie recognises the PAL camera as NTSC and will not capture.

The two helpful replies I got did not resolve the problem, which appears to be fairly fundamental. While trawling through Apple's U.S. support site I found a note from June 2000 (document 58644) about a similar problem in FCP version 1.2.5. PAL digital8 camcorders will be recognised as NTSC when capture from Hi-8 analog tapes is attempted. The "workaraound" suggested is to use Digital8 tapes. Sure enough, imovie correctly recognises the camera, a 620E, if playback is from Digital8 tapes; not a solution however if the footage is on 8mm tapes.

The same problem does not arise on a PC editing system using the very cheap VideoWave4, where playback and capture from analog 8mm tapes using the 620E works flawllessly. I guess that there is a software issue in imovie as well as FCP.

Anyone out there noticed or indeed solved this problem before, or knows what the cause of it is? It does seem to impose a very basic limit on the hyped utility of Digital8 camcorders for editing analog tapes on the Mac platform.

So is this a niche market for Wintel gear?

[iMike]

I have nothing useful to offer you I'm afraid, just to say that I have been using 8mm footage from a D8 camera into iMovie with no problem - maybe its' a camera specific problem rather than with D8 itself, as I use a TR8000.

[iMike]

I've just thought - maybe upgrading to iMovie2 would work? Or vice versa if you already use V2?

[JohnF]

I can capture analogue 8 and Hi8 using a TRV120E and imovie 2 - no problems at all. No Hype!

[bcrabtree]

I had someone contact me the other day with the same problem and he got back to me saying he'd sorted it out.

I've asked him to comment to this thread, but, for now, this is what he'd said when he reported back that he'd got a solution,

"I think I've cracked it by connecting unit to [the Mac] with the cassette door open. The G4 then recognized it as a pal device. Tried it with door shut and Hi8 tape loaded resulted in previous fault."

Clearly this is not satisfactory, but if it does at least enable you to start working, it may turn out to be useful.

Oh, and I've just seen a recent posting elsewhere in this forum, saying that a cure to such a problem came from re-installing FireWire. Here's the thread: http://www.dvdoctor.net/cgi-bin/ubb/Forum12/HTML/000102.html

Bob C

[This message has been edited by bcrabtree (edited 24 March 2001).]