iMovie/iBook/ and video camera..need help...

Urban_Legend · Sep 18th, 2003, 06:09 PM

Hello everyone,

I just had my friend send me this e-mail:

(Editing in the evenings and I have my ibook, 20 GB, 256mb with OSX10.1.5 , and an external 120 GB Hard drive linked with firewire. The Sony PD150, or one of the recorders also link with firewire into the external hardrive. This works great for downloading from camera to hardrive, editing, and saving. But Im in trouble as I can't get a stable image when exporting from the hardrive back to a DVD tape recorder or camera. I did succeed when using XXXXX computer, an i-mac, and I think that was because her computer has 2 firewire ports, where as mine has only one and the camera has to plug into the second firewire port on the external hardrive.
If that is the problem
1/ Belkin makes an external hub , would that give a stable image when exporting movie ?
or 2/ MY hardrive also has a USB 2 connection, and to use that I would need to purchase OSX 10.2 and figure out what a USB 2 PCI adapter card is ?
This would free up the firewire port on my computer and perhaps allow a stable video image)

Is the video being choppy because he is exporting from the external hardrive back to the DVD recorder or video camera? Is it iMovie itself?

I hope someone out there is able to help out so that I can send him an e-mail back hopefully tonight.

Klaatu · Sep 18th, 2003, 07:05 PM

Which version of iMovie?

I bet it's iMovie 3, right?

Moscool · Sep 18th, 2003, 07:08 PM

In my experience, daisy-chaining doesn't work. Lucky that you go the download part right. From a previous post:

*** ** ** ** * * **

Another thing about firewire cables:

Daisy chaining doesn't work very well with film. I guess there are just too many data pushing through at the same time. So, for example, if I try to capture DV on my external LaCie by chaining the FW connections (my PB12 only has one FW port), I get extremely slow capture and choppy quality.

This means that my PB hard disk must always have at least 15 Gigs free so that I can capture on this first, and then transfer to the LaCie (1 hour is about 12 Gigs).

Urban_Legend · Sep 18th, 2003, 07:15 PM

Hi Klaatu,

He said he has the basic iMovie so that probably isn't the latest build.

Hi Moscool,

So what would be the best way to help him out? Should he try either option 1 or 2? Or is there something else he can try?

Urban_Legend · Sep 19th, 2003, 09:42 AM

Does anyone know what the solution would be to the above problem?

Would my friend benefit from buying an external hub? Or what about his second request? As I don't know much about this stuff, I hope someone out there in ehMac land does [img]smile.gif[/img]

Thank you

Moscool · Sep 20th, 2003, 05:44 PM

My recommendation would be to copy the final document to the internal hard drive, to check it there to quality and then to export from there to the camera via FW.