Force iMovie to allow timestamps on DV camera time lapse
Aug 03, '06 07:30:05AM • Contributed by: robg
Aug 03, '06 07:30:05AM • Contributed by: robg
Recently I've been experimenting with iMovie's time-lapse movie mode, as described in this hint. In testing it on my MacBook, I found that the Time Lapse dialog would let me specify the number of frames to skip, and to embed the date/time on the captured footage. But on my G5, I had only the frame skip option available. After some testing, I thought I'd figured out the cause of the problem: I'd never recorded any time lapse video on the G5. As soon as I did so using my iSight, my next visit to the Time Lapse dialog box showed all the options available.
It turns out that my conclusion wasn't entirely correct. The act of recording something in time lapse mode didn't actually cause the extra options to appear -- not directly, any way. What it did do, since I was using my iSight for the recording, was to force iMovie into "iSight project" mode. In this mode, all the options are available. Since I typically have my full DV camera connected, I tend to start new projects in DV mode. After some testing with my DV camera, it was obvious that the date/time options were only available when iMovie is in "iSight project" mode and the iSight, not the DV camera, is connected. Drat, or so I thought...
I wondered if there might be a hidden preferences setting to enable date/time embedding with a DV camera attached, so I fired up Terminal and started digging around in the iMovie application bundle. I navigated into iMovie's Contents -> Resources -> English.lproj folder, thinking that might be the most-likely spot to find anything. In that folder are three 'browseable' files -- EnumeratedStrings.plist, InfoPlist.strings, and LocalizableStrings.plist. The first two didn't contain anything useful, but the third was a treasure trove! The file is stored as Unicode text, so I had to open it in a text editor to look at it. Once it was open, I searched for lapse, and found a bunch of entries, mostly related to help and setting the font/size color of the embedded date/time string. But then I found this section:
It turns out that my conclusion wasn't entirely correct. The act of recording something in time lapse mode didn't actually cause the extra options to appear -- not directly, any way. What it did do, since I was using my iSight for the recording, was to force iMovie into "iSight project" mode. In this mode, all the options are available. Since I typically have my full DV camera connected, I tend to start new projects in DV mode. After some testing with my DV camera, it was obvious that the date/time options were only available when iMovie is in "iSight project" mode and the iSight, not the DV camera, is connected. Drat, or so I thought...
I wondered if there might be a hidden preferences setting to enable date/time embedding with a DV camera attached, so I fired up Terminal and started digging around in the iMovie application bundle. I navigated into iMovie's Contents -> Resources -> English.lproj folder, thinking that might be the most-likely spot to find anything. In that folder are three 'browseable' files -- EnumeratedStrings.plist, InfoPlist.strings, and LocalizableStrings.plist. The first two didn't contain anything useful, but the third was a treasure trove! The file is stored as Unicode text, so I had to open it in a text editor to look at it. Once it was open, I searched for lapse, and found a bunch of entries, mostly related to help and setting the font/size color of the embedded date/time string. But then I found this section:
/* hidden, unsupported defaults for capture:Is a hack hidden if it's well documented? Back in Terminal (after I made sure iMovie wasn't running), I entered the defaults write command, then launched iMovie with my DV camera connected. It works, but there are two things you must do:
defaults write com.apple.iMovie allowDVwithSG -bool yes
Will cause DV devices to also show up as SequenceGrabber devices, which will make them available in iSight projects. All SG devices will have (SG) after their name. The main reason someone might want to use this is to do timelapse capture with embedded graphical timestamps using a DV camera as input.
- You must create an iSight, not DV, project.
- Your DV camera will be listed twice in the sources list. Pick the one with (SG) following its name.
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