I have finally got round to converting old videos from an 8MM camcorder onto my iMac. I’m not having problems actually getting the video on the Mac, however, what I have learnt is that the video is one long continuous video i.e. not split up neatly into scenes. This therefore is making it very difficult and much more time consuming to add titles, transitions etc.
Do you know of any way, or any software that will essentially analyse the captured video and split it up, or do I have work through the video breaking it up myself?
I’m using an 8mm Canon UC2000 Camcorder, connected to my iMac via a ADVC-55 DV Converter, and I’m using the latest version of iMovie.
Any thoughts or guidance would be appreciated.
With Thanks!
—–
DJ
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Automatically Splitting Long Captured Analogue Videos In iMovie Into Scenes
Comments: 4 Responses to “Automatically Splitting Long Captured Analogue Videos In iMovie Into Scenes”
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Usually what happens is that you record video on your camera a bit here and a bit there, with stops in between. Those stops are recognized by your camera and when you stream it into iMovie it recognizes those stops and breaks each into a clip.
But perhaps here the camera didn't send those signals? Actually, if you were using a converter box, then it would have been up to that box to send those signals -- but it wouldn't know where the breaks are. So I can see why you got one long video.
One way to handle it in iMovie is to put the whole clip into a project. Then use Shift+Command+S to split it into clips in the project. The original clip in your library is still one large thing, but in your project it appears as separate clips.
If that is not enough, you may want to find the large event file on your drive and then open it in QuickTime Player. You can use the Trim function in there to trim it to start and stop points, and then export that segment. Then Undo Undo Undo until you are back to before you executed the Trim, and trim out a new section.
Thanks for the response Gary....
"One way to handle it in iMovie is to put the whole clip into a project. Then use Shift+Command+S to split it into clips in the project. The original clip in your library is still one large thing, but in your project it appears as separate clips."
Is there anyway that this can be done automatically either in iMovie or with a plug-in or something?
With Thanks
You can't do it automatically because there is no way for a computer to know where you want the clips to be split. It may seem obvious to you, but the computer can't "know" the locations of the splits. It is just one long stream of video.
Thanks Gary for your insight, much appreciated.