Vixia HF-20 not recognized **anymore** by iMovie 09

[Loa]

Hello,

I've checked all the usual suspects, but for some reason my camera just isn't recognized anymore. Worked flawlessly for 8 months, worked flawlessly yesterday, but today it just won't appear in iMovie 09.

Tried rebooting, made sure the camera was in computer mode, unplugged, replugged, used another USB cable...

I'm out of ideas.

Loa

 

[CaptainChunk]

Do you know a friend with a Mac you can test the camera on? Process of elimination...

 

[Loa]

Hello,

I could try on my wife's MacBook, but I'd have to install iMovie.

The strange thing is that everything else works: it even mounts on the desktop and I can copy the files to my HD manually. And the vids themselves work as well.

Just not with iMovie.

Loa

 

[Loa]

Hello,

Same thing happens on my wife's MacBook: iMovie doesn't recognize the camera.

It's not as if there were thousands of relevant settings in the camera itself...

Loa

 

[Loa]

Hello,

Final update if some of you are reading this hoping for a solution.

I copied the mts files manually and then initialized the camera. For movies recorded after that, the camera works with iMovie just fine.

For the copied mts files that iMovie doesn't recognize, I used ClipWrap to convert (very fast, no re-encoding) the mts files to mov. (If you stop here, it works in iMovie, but for some reason "scanning" over the clips by mousing over them makes iMovie crash...) The next step, before importing to iMovie, is to use the freeware MPEG Streamclip to convert those .mov into the official Apple Intermediary Codec (sadly MPEG Streamclip can't read the original mts files). Importing those AIC (still using .mov extension) files into iMovies produces flawless results, indistinguishable from importing directly from the camera.

It's a damned long process, even on a Mac Pro, but it's better than losing the clips.

Loa