[Bill Celnick]

If you do have a phantom track, possibly go in to Sequence > Settings > Delete Tracks > Delete Empty Tracks (for both audio and video)

I’d presume a phantom track has no audio or video or it would not be phantom?

[Bill Celnick]

As I recollect from my DVD workflow on Mac – maybe 2008 or so, you’d create a Disc Image file in Encore or DVD Studio Pro, and possibly used Toast to burn it to disc.

I think Toast had some very basic authoring functions, but, not positive on that.

[Bill Celnick]

There never was a direct way to create a DVD from the timeline – at least not that I was aware of…and Encore is long since discontinued as are most DVD authoring programs these days.

Apple, Adobe etc have all but killed DVD production for us…too bad, as some of our clients still want them.

[Bill Celnick]

I’ve used the elgato device Christoper mentions for some old family 8MM tapes I came across – it works just fine, with RCA inputs

….there’s also this one which is a bit more versatile – but you’ll have to find a used one as it’s not an active product.

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/used/686585?gclid=CjwKCAjwrPCGBhALEiwAUl9X00a0OpfJ8ey5Vxd5ilqQS1u-GDMTyanMCGURqVhBk9-aoH9xCvHpqRoC39IQAvD_BwE

I used an iMac years ago (2008) as my main editing workstation – but they had firewire ports back then – I assume yours has Thunderbolt – maybe there is a cable that converts these?

[Bill Celnick]

I vaguely remember my old workflow now, but in those days I was using FCP 7…I seem to recall that when capturing DV clips, that I had to run them through a third party program called “ClipWrap” which converted the files into something FCP could handle.

If it’s still available, maybe you can download a trial.

[Bill Celnick]

Since you’ve captured with iMovie, are they also limited to 10 seconds within iMovie?

I haven’t even looked at iMovie in about 10 years, and no longer work on a Mac, but is there a reason you can’t capture the clips via Premiere instead?

[Bill Celnick]

I don’t know if this answers your questions – but you could do things like apply an effect, change in and out points in the source window, then create a bin within your project to place such clips – just drag them there within the project panel.

But – I do think placing the clips on the timeline allows you to do more in one place, and for me, avoiding the timeline would be a less efficient work-flow.

[Bill Celnick]

whenever I’ve had similar issues, it was usually something simple, like I had the wrong output device selected in preferences, so, as Eric suggested, check there first…otherwise make sure you haven’t muted the track unintentionally.

Can you hear the audio through your headphone out?

[Bill Celnick]

Depends on how you define “inexpensive” but there is Envato / VideoHive and Rocketstock among many others I’m sure.

You’ll find a greater selection of After Effects templates if you’d like to dabble with that.

[Bill Celnick]

Sorry about your problem – sounds extremely frustrating.

What we do is back up our original camera files in three places..when the project is finished we purge 2 of the 2 back-ups, but keep #3 indefinitely – partially because of issues like what you’re describing – but mostly becasue a client may want a revision someday.

If by any chance you have a set of the original files, bring them into your computer and have Premiere link to those files instead of the renamed files, and you might be in luck.

Otherwise, unfortunately you may have to choose between 2 tough options – manually renaming the clips, or starting the project over.