Importing Mini DV to iMovie

I have a Canon ZR20 and boxes of mini DV tapes that were shot on it. I am attempting to digitize them by importing them to iMovie on a 2023 Mac Studio, running on Ventura. Through the two required Mac adapters, the camera is connected via its DV in/out port to one of the computer's Thunderbolt 4 ports. With the camera connected and in playback mode, iMovie will recognize the camera and allow importing. The results, however, are basically unusable. 

The material imports as, per a full 60-minute Mini DV tape, over a thousand separate clips. I understand this can be something related to time stamping or time coding, or it can be iMovie's attempt to recognize points on the tape where the original recording was stopped and restarted. All of the tapes I have imported so far are single, continuous, hour-long recordings and have no such points where the recording was stopped and then restarted. A majority of the clips are around 0.01 seconds long, while some can be up to 10 minutes long. 

When dragged into a Timeline, the vast majority of the clips playback at normal speed, while others are marked with the turtle icon indicating the clip is being played at a speed slower than 100%. After reviewing multiple import Events of different tapes from the same camera, it appears that all of the slowed-down clips are set to the same rate of 67% speed. I believe all of these slowed-down clips I've seen so far have been 0:01 seconds long. 

Some of the imported clips are just audio. They appear in the Event as a green audio icon. When dragged into a Timeline they behave as an audio clip would, and settle below the other clips in the Timeline. Again, the tapes I have imported so far are all continuous hour-long recordings of simultaneous audio and video. There would seem to be no reason for anything to import as audio only. 

After importing the first tape and being faced with over a thousand clips in the Event, I thought perhaps if I dragged all of the clips at once into a Timeline it would all playback like normal. This, however, is far from the case. First I have yet to be able to drag all of the clips from an Event into a Timeline. iMovie will freeze for a bit, as though it is working to place all of the clips into the Timeline, then when iMovie unfreezes the clips are all back in the Event with nothing in the Timeline. If I grab a smaller section of the clips from the Event, I can drag them into the Timeline. However, when played back, both in iMovie preview, as well as when exported and rendered as a file, the result is full of errors. The playback is super choppy and stuttery, and appears as though frames are speeding up randomly. It looks as though frames are missing as well as out of order. I should note, this is also the case when previewing clips within the Event. Also, within the Event sections of clips will be out of chronological order. Groups of clips, from a few seconds to over a minute long, will appear entirely out of the order they were recorded in, as well as, played back in while importing. 

Of note - the camera has never been serviced. I haven't used it in over a decade for anything but playing the same tapes I now want to digitize. All of the camera's basic functions still work but, I'd presume the mechanics in general may or may not be working exactly as intended twenty years ago. As I've watched these tapes on the camera LCD screen over the years, the playback has developed occasional errors like momentary digital glitching here or there, which I've always presumed was related to the LCD screen on the camera. Being that this is tape, I have to account for the possibility that there is a problem with the camera playback heads, and that is an underlaying cause for the issues I'm experiencing. Although, when playing the tapes for the import process, the video does not playback with all of the errors in the imported material, neither on the camera LCD screen or in iMovie.

What might be the issue, or issues, at hand?

What might be the solution?

Does Final Cut offer a solution?

Is purchasing a replacement device to playback the tapes on for importing a possible solution?