Last night at home, iMovie, which up until now, had been performing reliably and well for many months, suddenly stopped importing video. I am mystified, because to my knowledge I made no noticeable changes to anything.http://www.macosx.com/forums/images/smilies/frown.gif
The symptoms are similar to those reported by several others (see postings 167, 219, 288, and especially 506 in the http://www.macosx.com/content/faq.php/c24/Mac-OS-X-Applications-iLife-Apps.html
Questions Asked.
Symptoms - (and some apologies - problem is on home computer - and I'm at work - so I'm working on memory and notes) when I attempt to import, all I see is blue screen with "camera connected". Pushing the "Import" button has no effect. Pushing other control buttons will sometimes cycle the Canopus box I'm using into digital import mode, which I then change back to analog mode. If nothing else, this suggests that there's communication going on between computer and box via firewire. Sometimes the blue screen reads "camera connection error" unless I restart the program. Sometimes the menus become unreadable - lots of little boxes with "A" inside them instead of the normal menu commands.
Also, when I close iMovie (version 4), and then restart, I usually now get a message that says something like "the following clips are not associated with your project" and asks me if I want to delete them. For some reason, apparently 35 to 125 little tiny QuickTime clips (that can't be opened in QuickTime - "end of file" errors) are being created each time I attempt to create a project and try to import.
Now, here's something unusual to add to the mix. I also have a shareware program called BTV Pro on my machine. It also wasn't importing last evening, BUT, when I went to the video settings and looked at the preview options, the video clip that I was playing on my VHS throught the Canopus box, was playing normally in the preview pane! So obviously, the video signal was getting into my computer via the Canopus unit and the firewire cable - for some reason it wasn't getting fed into the "video import" channel, or whatever it might be called. Does this suggest a deeper system problem? Or something with QuickTime?
My set-up: an iMac G5 with 1 Meg RAM. Running Tiger 10.4.2. I import analog video using a Canopus ADVC 1100 converter. (I'm a pretty experienced user - not a technician, but I was doing internal repairs on MacPlus'es and hacking around with ResEdit with some confidence back in the good old days.)
I have tried all the fixes suggested that I could find in various "help" listings last night - plugging and unplugging, rebooting, turning VCR off and on, yada, yada, yada. No luck. One of the threads mentioned above - that I just read - suggested playing a few notes in Garage Band might help - haven't tried this yet, but it sounds weird enough that it might work.
And, I can't find any easy way to just reinstall iMovie - it seems to be embedded in the system software, and, at least before exhaustion set in last night, I couldn't see how to just reinstall iMovie.
So, anyone else have any insights?
The symptoms are similar to those reported by several others (see postings 167, 219, 288, and especially 506 in the http://www.macosx.com/content/faq.php/c24/Mac-OS-X-Applications-iLife-Apps.html
Questions Asked.
Symptoms - (and some apologies - problem is on home computer - and I'm at work - so I'm working on memory and notes) when I attempt to import, all I see is blue screen with "camera connected". Pushing the "Import" button has no effect. Pushing other control buttons will sometimes cycle the Canopus box I'm using into digital import mode, which I then change back to analog mode. If nothing else, this suggests that there's communication going on between computer and box via firewire. Sometimes the blue screen reads "camera connection error" unless I restart the program. Sometimes the menus become unreadable - lots of little boxes with "A" inside them instead of the normal menu commands.
Also, when I close iMovie (version 4), and then restart, I usually now get a message that says something like "the following clips are not associated with your project" and asks me if I want to delete them. For some reason, apparently 35 to 125 little tiny QuickTime clips (that can't be opened in QuickTime - "end of file" errors) are being created each time I attempt to create a project and try to import.
Now, here's something unusual to add to the mix. I also have a shareware program called BTV Pro on my machine. It also wasn't importing last evening, BUT, when I went to the video settings and looked at the preview options, the video clip that I was playing on my VHS throught the Canopus box, was playing normally in the preview pane! So obviously, the video signal was getting into my computer via the Canopus unit and the firewire cable - for some reason it wasn't getting fed into the "video import" channel, or whatever it might be called. Does this suggest a deeper system problem? Or something with QuickTime?
My set-up: an iMac G5 with 1 Meg RAM. Running Tiger 10.4.2. I import analog video using a Canopus ADVC 1100 converter. (I'm a pretty experienced user - not a technician, but I was doing internal repairs on MacPlus'es and hacking around with ResEdit with some confidence back in the good old days.)
I have tried all the fixes suggested that I could find in various "help" listings last night - plugging and unplugging, rebooting, turning VCR off and on, yada, yada, yada. No luck. One of the threads mentioned above - that I just read - suggested playing a few notes in Garage Band might help - haven't tried this yet, but it sounds weird enough that it might work.
And, I can't find any easy way to just reinstall iMovie - it seems to be embedded in the system software, and, at least before exhaustion set in last night, I couldn't see how to just reinstall iMovie.
So, anyone else have any insights?