Forums | MacLife

Father of the Bar Mitzvah · 2006-10-22 9:47 pm

I'm giving a first stab at importing video from a miniDV camera onto my iMac using iMovie. Things went smoothly except that the maximum length of the imported video clips is a consistent 09:28.02 min:sec; the individual filming segments are about 12 mins long. Initially I was using the auto scene break feature which broke up the segements correctly except for the 9:28 limit. I turned it off and tried again with the same result. Is there some setting that defines the size of video clips? Is it a physical hardware issue? Software version/bug issue? confused

Hardware: iMac G5 1.8 GHz, 512 MB RAM, OS 10.3.9
Sony "Handycam" DCR-HC42 NTSC, Firewire connection
iMovie ver 4.0.1

spoonsprout · 2006-10-22 10:22 pm

Its always been that way.

It comes out to 4GB per 9:28 clip, give or take a few megabytes.

If memory serves, its 5GB/12minutes in raw DV.

Father of the Bar Mitzvah · 2006-10-23 5:49 am

Well that's weird. Why the limit? If I have the HD space why not as large as the entire tape? Is there a way to join clips so that they always play seamlessly? Some of the clips join together correctly and others stop and have to be restarted.

Is this a common practice for all video software or is this unique to iMove?

Father of the Bar Mitzvah · 2006-10-23 1:05 pm

Found the answer on Apple's site: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=60562

Files split at 1.9 GB (about 9 minutes) when capturing clips in iMovie
When importing media using iMovie, large video and audio files will be split into multiple clips in the Shelf. Each clip of DV video has a maximum length of about 9 minutes.

iMovie saves imported video in large, full-quality DV format. Because DV clips contain a lot of data, they can be very large files.

Earlier versions of Mac OS had a file size limitation of 2 gigabytes (GB). For compatibility with earlier versions of Mac OS, iMovie does not create files larger than 2 GB when it imports media. If you exceed this limit by capturing a clip that is very long, iMovie splits the clip, and continues capturing into another clip, and continues doing this until the capture is completed. The maximum length of an individual DV movie clip in this case is limited to approximately 9 minutes. The length of other media will vary depending on the type of data.

To play back multiple clips as a single sequence when editing your movie, drag the clips to the Timeline in the correct order.

Funkey Monkey · 2006-10-23 1:09 pm

This limit was eliminated in later versions of iMovie. I think it was version 5 that lifted the limit.

For what it's worth, all you have to do is put those 9:28 clips in the timeline next to each other, and it'll come out seamlessly.

spoonsprout · 2006-10-24 9:32 pm

Doh... I'm having math problems lately.

I know its been up to iMovie 4 that imposed the limit, didn't know that 5 lifted it. Makes sense as 5 isn't backwards compatible enough to hit the 2 gig limit.

Forums | MacLife

#1 2006-10-22 9:47 pm

iMovie size limits?

#2 2006-10-22 10:22 pm

Re: iMovie size limits?

#3 2006-10-23 5:49 am

Re: iMovie size limits?

#4 2006-10-23 1:05 pm

Re: iMovie size limits?

#5 2006-10-23 1:09 pm

Re: iMovie size limits?

#6 2006-10-24 9:32 pm

Re: iMovie size limits?

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