[MacDV] Weirdnesses about exporting from iMovie to DV

[Patty Winter]

A couple of months ago, some helpful folks here offered
some suggestions in why iMovie 3 has stopped letting me
export to a Full Quality DV file. Unfortunately, neither
of their suggestions (presence of Toast plug-ins; absence
of ~/Movies folder) were the problem in my case. I finally
got it to work, but I still don't understand what's happening.

I choose Export, select To QuickTime, choose the Full Quality 
DV option, and click Export. A standard Mac file-saving window 
appears, I accept the suggested name for the file (xxxx.mov), 
and click OK. That window goes away, and a second or two later, 
iMovie beeps at me and does nothing. 

I tried saving the file under a different name. I tried saving 
to a different folder. I tried having the original iMovie files 
on my external drive and saving to the internal drive. 

Finally, it worked when I ran iMovie files from the internal
drive and saved to the external drive. (The external drive doesn't
have a System folder or user accounts, so there's no ~/Movies
folder, in case that matters.)

Anyone have any idea why only this combination of drives is
working for DV exports?

Also, at one point I was able to export to the same drive
by using the Expert Settings and saving as a Self-contained
Movie file. That turned out to be 37GB--twice the size of
the DV files! I brought both that file and the Full Quality
DV file up in QuickTime, and the Movie Info on both says
they're 37GB, even though the FQDV one is only taking up
18.5GB on the hard drive. (The usual amount for a 1.5+ hr.
DV file.) The S-CM one does have 48KHz audio vs. 32KHz for
the FQDV file, but otherwise, the info is identical. Why
does QuickTime say that my 18.5GB file is 37GB, and is there
any reason I should keep the "real" 37GB file around? I'm
already trying to figure out how to keep all the normal-sized
DV files for the future.


Thanks,
Patty