iMovie questions

Hi folks

Is there someone out there with some experience
with iMovie that could help me? It seems that I can
do just about anything I want to do in iMovie on my
FireWire hard drive *except* write the project file.

Here's the problem: I captured quite a bit
of raw footage directly to my hard drive,
then copied the project to my FireWire drive
for editing. Bizarrely, I can open the project on the
FireWire drive only if I also copy a "._Projectname" file from
the original project--otherwise iMovie doesn't
recognize the file as an iMovie project. I can
open the project and move clips around and stuff,
but the project won't save. If I execute "Save project"
and quit, the next time I run iMovie, it
has discarded all my changes. It's as if it fails to write
the project file, but doesn't tell me.

I've tried creating a new
project and moving the clips to its Media folder.
On opening a project, iMovie is supposed to throw any dv
files it finds in its Media folder into the tray, but first it says
"Found NN files that don't belong in the project folder.
Okay to move them to the trash?" Then it throws the
clips into the tray. But, again, the next time I open
the folder, it doesn't work.

Editing, etc. on my PowerBook's built-in hard
drive works just fine, including saving.

Has anyone seen behavior like this? Know a workaround?

Thanks

--MarkJohnson

[B. Moore]

Hello,
Glad to see some one else loves iMovie2. I'm almost 100% sure you have to do it this way.
1.) I remember reading somewhere that you can't use a zip or external drive and work on a project.
2.) I think you have to work on it internally and can store the finished product on your external FW drive.
3.) If you have the iMovie2 "The Missing Manual" Pogue press by O'Reilly pg. 101 explains the whole thing.

I have 1 60gb HD as my main with OS X with iMovie2 program on it .
my second drive is a 30gb with the OS9 apps on it and my third is a 120gb, where I store all my iMovie2 projects - they are all internal- 7200 rpm

If you want a bunch of free stuff I'll give yoou the links.This is other than the stuff you'll find at the Mac web site.

Bruce
bvmprod@quik.com

[Ken Tanaka]

Mark,
I don't know what's holding you up. iMovie can, indeed, operate on a project located on a Firewire drive; I do it all of the time.

Here's what a -do- know. The directory structure iMovie expects for a project is extremely rigid (unlike FCP). That is, there will be a FOLDER named as your project name, under which there will be your actual iMovie project file (named precisely). There will also be a special folder titled "Media" in this project folder, within which all of your clips wil reside.

iMovie will not automatically detect dv files in the Media folder. In fact, it will be inclined to send such intruders to the Trash. Nor will make importing footage simple.

Bruce's recomendation on David Pogue's "iMovie: The Missing Manual" is a good one. Since there's no manual it's a good (cheap) investment.

Thanks, guys. I think an Apple rep told me I should be able to capture
to my local disk, and then edit the video on the external FireWire drive
with iMovie2 on OS X. Looks like Ken can do it. It's very weird.
I have David Pogue's excellent book for iMovie 1, but iMovie 2
is so much better, I guess I'll get the new book, too.

Bruce, it would be great if you could post those links. The more
iMovie-compatible tools, the better!

I found a site today about using freeware tools to make
VCDs, but it was a long, 5-6 step process, and the instructions
were so abbreviated that I didn't think it was worth trying to do.
Are there any good OS X tools for making VCD image files? (The
only CD writer I have is on an old Winbox.)

Thanks again, guys, for the generous and helpful feedback!

--Mark Johnson

[B. Moore]

Hi Mark,
Do you use OS 9 or OSX?

Bruce

[B. Moore]

Mark,
Well here goes:
www.alcjudprod.sc/ (the sc could be a se)

www.findsound.com/types.html
If you use OS X it will come down as a quicktime moviesound, I prefer them as aiff. to do this when you see the sound you like click it, l keep the check mark in aiff and remove the other two, find the sound effect you want, hold down the controll key and at the same time click and hold down the mouse on the link, then when the window opens, go down to down load to disk and it is saved as an aiff. ( good idea is to prepare a place to put the effect ahead of time!)

www.fontfreak.com
on the left side of screen click macfont, page comes up, if I see any font I like i first print thre page and use it as a font directory, I circle the font in red so I know that it's available, then download. some are free ware some are shareware, I prefer the freeware

www.atm.com/702/imovie-transaction-tricks.shtml

www.alfreesoundeffects.com/noflash.htm

www.geethree.com they offer some free transitions, I liked them so much I bought the actual disks ( i prefer the hard stuff just in case there's a crash)

www.versiontraker.com get a copy of macjanitor

try these for now You might like to print this post


Bruce

[Daniel Berube]

<<<-- Originally posted by MarkJohnson : Hi folks
Is there someone out there with some experience
with iMovie that could help me? It seems that I can
do just about anything I want to do in iMovie on my
FireWire hard drive *except* write the project file.-->>>

Read through the foloowing and see if this clears up the issues you are experiencing. The following has been excerpted from The "Unofficial" iMovie FAQ, written by Dan Slagle, at:
http://www.danslagle.com/mac/imovie/iMovieFAQ.html.

- Here's how to move an existing project to another disk:
Since iMovie keeps everything needed in the project folder, you simply drag the entire project folder from one disk to the other. After Finder finished copying (which may take a while), you can open the copy in two ways:
1._ Open the project folder and double-click on the project file.
2._ Launch iMovie and select Open in the File menu. Navigate to the copy and open it.

- Here's how to start a new project on another disk.
Select New Project from the File menu.
In Mac OS 9, click on the "Desktop" button.
In Mac OS X you enlarge the dialog by clicking on the button on the right with a small triangle in it. Drag the horizontal scroll bar all the way to the left to see the available disks.
For both 9 and X: Select the disk you want and then navigate to the folder where you want the project.

Hope this helps!

[Mike Finnerty]

While I count the days until I'm able to afford FCP, I've been playing around with iMovie. I was hoping someone here could help me out.

Are you able to import .mov files into iMovie? I have a file of some stock footage (it actually came from a FCP tutorial CD) that I would like to play around with in iMovie. I don't seem to be able to import this file.

Thanks.

[Daniel Berube]

<<<-- Originally posted by L1 Video : Are you able to import .mov files into iMovie? -->>>

According to Knowledge Base TIL Article 60561, entitled "iMovie: Importing Non-DV QuickTime Movies," and available at:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=60561:

iMovie is designed to get all video clips by capturing them directly from a DV device. If you want to use video from other sources they must first be converted into DV streams.

With Quicktime Pro, you can convert a Quicktime movie into a DV stream.

1. Open the QuickTime movie in QuickTime Player.
2. Choose Export from the File menu.
3. In the Export popup menu, select Movie to DV Stream. Use the Default Settings.
4. Type a name for your DV movie and click Save.
5. Move the newly saved DV movie into the Media folder of your project. Note: The DV clip may be much larger than the original QuickTime movie. Make sure you have enough space on your hard disk.
6. Open iMovie. You will see the following dialog box which states:
"There was one stray clip file in the project folder. It will be loaded onto the shelf for you to decide what to do with it."
7. Click OK. The DV clip will be imported to the Shelf. If the shelf is already full, you may see a different dialog saying that the shelf is full. Delete some files from the Shelf, or move them to the timeline to make room for the new clip which will then appear on the Shelf.

For information on how to upgrade to QuickTime Pro, visit the QuickTime web site: http://www.apple.com/quicktime/.

Try it.

[Mike Finnerty]

Thanks Dan. That was it...worked great.

[Kyle De Priest]

Hi everyone,
This is probably more info than you need, but here it all is so you have a general idea of what's going on.

I am new to macs. I went out and bought one of those dual processor 1 gig power macs. It has a super drive and all the bells and whistles. It came stock with 256k of ram, and I have yet to upgrade it (trust me, I will) I did however put in two internal 7200 rpm IBM deskstar slave drives. The stock mac HD is a 80 gig. My DV slave is a 120 gig and my music slave is a 40 gig. All three are serving me well. I have yet to undertake FCP3 and DVD Studio Pro. Up until now, I have been adequitely satisfied with iMovie and iDVD.

I receintly shot just under an hour of footage in very dark conditions with my GL1. (54.39 minutes) I used a beachteck adapter for sound with a Sennheiser shotgun mic on top, a sennheiser wireless sending unit and a handheld sennheiser corded mic. All plugged into the beachtek monitored with headphones.

I downloaded the footage into my mac via firewire and started to edit. The footage was very dark, so I started to mess with some of my effects to try to lighten it. This of course caused grain, but what the hell G.I.-Go (garbage in, garbage out) The effect I found to be the best at lightening it was one I got for free from www.geethree.com. It is called 'solarize' I used it slightly just to bring the detail out of the image and was pretty satisfied. When I review the footage thru iMovie, it looks and sounds fine.

Now for the dilema. When I tell iMovie to Export for iDVD. It does it's 165 minute deal where it compresses the data for quick time (I guess) Then, I open iDVD and move the data into the field (like I've done about 4 times before with no problems) and tell the machine to 'burn DVD' Once the disc has been created, I take it out and put it in my DVD player in my living room. At first, everything looks cool. (actually, better than I expected.) As the 'show' progresses, the sound gets further and further out of sync. By the end of the 'show' the sound is AHEAD of the picture by about 1 full second. This is of course, no good.

Here's my thinking. When I watch the 'show' on iMovie, it looks great. It is perfect, so I don't think my problem is with iMovie (but maybe) When I watch the show from my desktop on the quick time file, it's off. This leaves me to believe that the problem is not with my iDVD program. There is something happening with the quick time compression. Is this due to the solarize effect? Is this a lack of ram (although, it's never affected me in the past, this is my 5th DVD burn job). Is there an adjustment I need? I have burned about 200 blank CD's in my burner. Could that be the cause? Should apple clean my machine. I did buy the extended coverage.

Anyway, thanks for the energy and thought into my situation. Any help would be very appreciated. I just called a buddy at apple and he's going to rack his brain as well. I'll let you all know if he comes up with anything.


-Kyle

[Ken Tanaka]

Hello Kyle,
Welcome to the Mac world! Sounds like your first experience is a bit rough.

Off-hand I'm not certain what is causing this trouble, not having used iMovie to create iDVD content. I do know that sound and picture can get out-of-synch over long sequences in the Final Cut Pro world due to frame rate issues.

So, for starters, let's make sure that you exported your video in DV format. QuickTime is merely a wrapper for content and does not determine compression, per se. Based on your "165 min" deal, assuming that you mean it took that time to "compress" your footage, I'm guessing that you did not export in full-frame/rate DV (which would have taken much less time.

Here's Apple's page on the subject: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=50168

[Jeff Donald]

When you copied the mini Dv data from your camcorder to your hard drive did you do it in one continuous take? Meaning you plugged your camcorder into the Firewire port and used iMovie to bring the contents into your computer without any pauses? If so, try doing it in smaller chunks. Watch the out of sync copy and determine when the sync slip becomes noticeable. Then copy the tape in lengths of that duration. Yes, it's inconvenient, but it is a work around. Have you updated to OS 10.2.2 ? That is solving a lot of FCP issues for the owners of the newer DP models.

[Kyle De Priest]

Jeff,
you bring up an interesting point. In the past, I have been able to attach the firewire to the camera, press "Import" and walk away. Once the footage is complete, (like an hour later) I simply rewind the DV tape, unhook the machine from the camera, put the camera away and get to work.

Lately however, the camera has been stopping during the importing process and I've had to restart it from where it left off. I also had this happen the other day when I was exporting a completed project back to the camera for DV storage. I haven't had a chance to mess with it to see if I could get it to do it again.

Do you think that could be part of my problem? Keep in mind, the sound is perfect on the iMovie playback. It's not until I try to export it to iDVD that there is a problem.

I appreciate your brainstorms
-Kyle

[Jeff Donald]

Are you running OS 10.2.2 and QuickTime 6.0.2 ?

Jeff