The beeps mean the audio needs to be rendered. There are several causes, do a search and you'll see I've covered this topic in the past. If you still have problems, post details about your computer, OS, software, etc. so I can trouble shoot the issues.

Couldn't say off hand exactly how many frames off the audio is, but if, in some footage, a person were to say, "Yes.", the sound of the word would be heard, with the lips moving immediately after.

iMovie and FCE don't play very well since iMovie clips require their sound portion to be rendered. If you captured in FCE then make sure all your settings match up to NTSC 48khz.

Does the sync get worse gradually or is it consistently off?

Generally, it gets worse.

ok I will try another stab at this. If you turn on your camera's display and play back footage, does it say 12bit or 16bit? If it's 12bit then iMovie will crap itself according to the apple knowledge base. Sorry if you already tried this.

I will check, but I remember switching to 16 all those months ago. Thanks, Glen.

Hi-8 to iMovie problems
 

I connect my Hi-8 camcorder (or Hi-8 player) through a SONY 950 digital camcorder and then firewire to iMovie. Small black bands appear at the edges, larger on the left edge. When transferring VHS video, the same bands appear but smaller. The same happens on another Mac. An Apple store rep says it happens because Hi-8 and VHS are not exactly 4:3 and so do not fit exactly into the iMovie frame. This doen't sound right - both tape types dislplay properly on a TV. Could Apple be right? Would it help to use a dedicated analog to digital converter instead of the 950?

I have successfully put Hi8 footage thru a Hi8 camera onto a Min DV tape using XL1s and then Firewired into FCP and I don't remember this problem. I think it worked fine.

I'm sure I didn't have to re-scale it when it was in the timeline.

It might be that the sensor/CCD chip on the hi8 doesn't have the pixels on the side. This is to save costs or something. the hi8 format is still 4:3 like DV.

I don't think an analog-digital converter would help. You should be fine since the black bands do not show up on TV (they fall in the overscan area- your TV crops stuff).

The same thing happens when I transfer VHS video except the bands are smaller.

You're right! The bands don't show when played on a TV.

On deck: iMovie 3.5?
 

ThinkSecret discusses a possible major upgrade to iMovie (3.5) as possibly being released soon. Reports have it as nearing or already being at gold master status. Speculation has the release as occurring during Macworld (?) in January.

Wonder if there might be updates to iPhoto and other iLife products at the same time.....

Video resolution in iMovie
 

This may be a dumb question...

When I capture video from my camcorder into my Mac, using a FireWire cable, am I saving the full resolution and all the data on the tape onto my hard drive?

I'll be getting FCE2 when it shows up in the local stores, but I want to make sure iMovie is a good transfer tool. I assume FCE2 will transfer all the resolution and data, right?

Thanks.

Cheers...

Um... kind of.

iMovie pretty much captures at full quality. However, it captures into a video format that Final Cut cannot play back without rendering. If you wish to use iMovie-captured clips then you must transcode them with batch export, re-capture in Final Cut, or render all the clips (every single time they move you have to render the clip to hear it).

iMovie also doesn't capture timecode and some other information, which you may or may not need. timecode information is useful for re-capturing specific clips.

Final Cut uses QuickTime files compressed with the DV codec as its native format, while iMovie uses DV Stream files. Glenn is correct, you will have to do some conversion so you might want to just wait to do your capturing until after you get FCE2. I believe that you can export your iMovie clips as Quicktime files (been awhile since I used iMovie) if you want to be ready in advance. You could then delete the iMovie files afterwards to free up space. But anyway you go there will be an extra step of file conversion or rendering.

Another approach to capturing during the interim might be to use a shareware program like BTV Pro which I believe will capture and save files in Quicktime format.