imovie 08 quitting during import

[ukumehame]

Problem with imovie 08. I am importing from mini-DV (via firewire from camcorder). After a few minutes, the application quits. I have tried everything from repairing disk permissions, restarting, logging in as a different user, etc.. I called mac's support line. The operator let me know that this was an emerging problem with imovie 08. She had me check in my library folder under quick time for extra files to no avail. I have been on hold now for an ilife specialist who might know more for almost 45 minutes. I think this forum may be faster at this point.
Thank you!

 

[Giaguara]

When you import video, keep Console application open (Applications > Utilities) and you should see some code pop on it to see what happens on the application or OS X when it crashes.

So any added quicktime codeds (incl. divx or xvid)?
Which exact version of OS X and iMovie do you have? If there is an update for either available, maybe it will fix that (since it sounds like they are very aware of that).

 

[ukumehame]

thank you for the suggestions! I finally got through this morning (after 50 minutes) to an ilife specialist at mac. The actual problem is good old engineered obsolescence. My mini DV camcorder is old news for imovie 8 which only works with the mpeg4 format. There are 2 solutions, of which I used the first. 1. Install the old imovie hd 6 from the apple.com page and use the old technology. 2. the Tech guy also guided me to a site called www.squared5.com which has a free download, mpeg stream clips. This software would allow me to import my DV as a streaming video, save it to my desktop, and then import it into imovie 08. I hope this helps anyone else using last year's camcorder with this year's software!

 

[Giaguara]

Hm - at least there are a few workarounds for it.
(I doubt everyone buys a new dvcam and a digicam every single year just to match the software though, so from the software point of view.. how much more space would it have taken for iMovie to actually support mpeg2 or .mov? 20 MB? As compared to how much space iLife 08 needs, that would have been close to nothing...)