imovie HD (6) - what is going on?

[BenFancy]

I teach basic video production in a high school and yesterday discovered that none of my students could download any footage into imovie hd from any of the cameras we have in class. We have 6 mini's and two imacs, we're using Canon GL2's and JVC widescreen miniDV cameras.

Overnight, nothing is now working? When we plug the camera's in, the software no longer recognizes the camera and we no longer get the blue screen ready to import. Software updates were run on all of the minis and imacs but to no avail...Any ideas? Even when I plug numerous camera's into my MacBookPRO nothing registers.

This is very frustrating....and I have a class in two hours!

 

[JediMeister]

First thing I would do is check the system profiler which is accessed by going to the Apple Menu->About This Mac... and then clicking on the More Info button. Check the firewire and USB sections under hardware in the sidebar to see if the connected camcorder appears there. If they don't, zap the PRAM (without the camcorder connected), launch iMovie before reconnecting the camera. Also create another user account on the affected computer(s) and test importing on there as well. If it works, pull the iMovie plist and caches, if it doesn't...you might have to reinstall iMovie after you pull its associated files from Macintosh HD/Library/Application Support, Macintosh HD/Library/Caches, and Macintosh HD/Library/Receipts.