11-17-2010, 05:07 PM

I have a Canon Vixia HV30. It has been a few months (and a few MAC updates) since I have connected the camera to iMovie (09).

Today I wanted to drop some film onto iMovie from another camera (Sony) and no luck. So I gave my Canon a shot and no luck there either. My Canon had always worked before. I purchased it the same time I got my Mac.

Any suggestions: 1) How to rectify the problem, and 2) Why I am having this problem in the first place?

Thanks in advance.

11-17-2010, 08:19 PM

The first thing to always do is to check that the computer is seeing the camera. Connect the camera and turn it on, wait a few moments, open System Profiler in the Utilities folder, review the Firewire tab to see it sees your Canon camera. If not...

If you have another firewire device and cable, try that. Use Refresh to see if that appears as listed.

Cables do go bad so that is a possibility. Borrow one if you can.

Firewire ports can go bad and that would require a hardware fix.

Lastly, it may be possible that some low level software glitch is making the camera invisible to the system. I generally discount this one, but given some descriptions I've seen over the years, I have to wonder.

11-17-2010, 09:57 PM

Unfortunately my FireWire Bus message is simply:
Maximum Speed: Up to 800 Mb/sec

I have tried two different cables with the same result. I have tried multiple USB ports as well.

Frustrated.