Digital video motion analysis: Digitizing

Digitize the video of an experiment

• Connect camera or VCR video (and audio) output to computer video in, plug everything in and turn them on
• Open the "iMovie" application (you can find it in under the Miscellaneous submenu on the Apple menu)
• Click on "new movie project" -> "Other" -> "Untitled" then enter the filename for your movie
• Click on the "DV" tab. If your camera is on you should see an image in the window (Note: sometimes the camera goes into "sleep" mode--just cycle the power); hit Play on the VCR and you should see video in the window.
• Use the "import" and "stop" buttons to digitize the video from the VCR or directly from the camera while running your experiment. iMovie automatically saves each shot as a "clip" in a folder called "(your movie) Media". You can assign a name to each shot before you actually digitize it or aftwards.
• Click on the "edit" tab to see or delete your existing shots. In this window, you can jump between shots using the timeline at the bottom of iMovie. Once the entire clip is loaded onto your working bar you can scroll or play the existing shots. If you want to delete a shot, you must first delete it from the timeline, select it in the loading bar, and hit "apple T" on the first location of clip to delete then repeat step for the end part of clip, highlight and press the "delete" key.
• Once you have digitized the video you need, select "Save project " under the "File" menu, then export movie to Quicktime following user prompts. Note: unless there is only a single shot you want to end up analyzing, I wouldn't recommend editing with the timeline in iMovie; instead, use "MoviePlayer".

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