Firewire not detected in iMovie

farron · #1 March 15th, 2008, 09:10 PM

I have an old JVC GR-DVL920U digital camera and am attempting to connect it to my (new) macbook with a firewire..iMovie does not detect any camera connected. I initially attached the cable to the camera, then into the firewire port, then turned the camera on to VCR mode...when that didn't work I tried restarting the camera, unpluging and pluging back the firewire and even restarting the computer with the firewire plugged in.

The computer is not detecting and device being plugged into the firewire port. I even tried with a USB and didn't capture any detection. My still digital camera (Canon SD1000) plugs in with the USB and has no problems, my (old) ipod shuffle plugs directly into the USB port and there are no problems...am i doing something wrong?

Thank you much for any help you can give!

farron · #2 March 18th, 2008, 06:18 PM

anyone? I'm getting desperate here! ...video editing is one of the main reasons I purchased the macbook in the first place...please, please, please...anyone?

PBear · #3 March 19th, 2008, 03:45 AM

1. Try using another firewire cable.
2. Try it on another Mac if you can.
3. The dv port on the camcorder might be dead, in which case you should read #4.
4. Buy a new camcorder.
But before buying a new camcorder you could try some basic troubleshooting.
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.p...04011205473937
http://forums.osxfaq.com/viewtopic.php?t=7269
http://thexlab.com/faqs/faqs.html

saga32 · #4 March 21st, 2008, 07:27 AM

Start up System Profiler and click on FireWire to see if your camera appears here. If you try different connections use Refresh in the View menu to see the change. iMovie HD doesn't always automatically switch to the camera so click on the camera icon or the slide switch to change to camera. Also in earlier version of iMovie i could use an external FireWire drive with my FW camera. iMovie HD will not show the camera while the FW driveis connected

BikerRob · #5 March 21st, 2008, 09:35 AM

I had the exact same problem ...

Curious: are you using VMWare to run Windows on the Mac?

I was ... and it turned out that VMWare was hijacking the Firewire & USB ports for Windows but not letting me use them with Mac. I had to turn on and boot up Windows, THEN try it on the Mac side ... and it worked.