how does ones Black a tape? Is this setting up timecode or something?
You black a tape by recording over the entire tape (or the portion you will be using) ahead of time, with the lens cap on. That guarantees that you'll have continuous timecode on the tape and makes it less likely you'll get into trouble when software can't sync to a timecode in recorded material.
Some people say that's a good habit, while others say it isn't worth the wear and tear on the camera and film. Another choice to avoid timecode-sync problems is to make sure every scene you film has plenty of leader on it, i.e., you start filming before the part you'll want to import and save. That's a nice habit, but sometimes you just can't do it, and sometimes you already have a tape to deal with that wasn't recorded that way.
I have a tape that Final Cut Pro wouldn't import via my timecodes, because I was trying to capture a scene right at the front of the tape. FCP tries to find the 0:00:00 time code but rewinds over it and gets lost in the tape leader. I had to transfer manually (telling FCP to record what's coming in live during playback) rather than rely on the timecode.
I'm not sure if iMovie has a similar way to record "manually". In some cases, it's necessary to transfer video from one camcorder to another camcorder before it can be transferred to the computer based on timecode.
The original question was why the camcorder stops playing when iMovie tries to read the data, and I wonder if that's because iMovie is confused by the timecodes and can't get its bearings.
