fixed it, don't have a problem now and are looking to understand what caused it?
I had issues exporting an iMovie project to a QuickTime movie - I had not yet tried exporting to my camcorder... I decided that since the export failed at the very beginning of the project, but I was able to export selected clips after the very beginning of the project, I just replaced the very beginning... and all was well. I could watch the project in iMovie perfectly fine... the symptom was not an actual export failure, but the first 2 seconds or so was gray - and looked almost lightly "embossed" showing a monochrome version of the color video clip - then it wiped diagonally and pixelated and all looked as it should (this was the QT export - like I said, it looked fine in iMovie). Once the clip and fade-in were replaced, all was good.
It *could* be that replacing just the first clip (in you situation) might have been all that was needed (rather than rebuild the entire project)... I will never know if my camcorder would have thrown up on the export. If this ever happens again, I will be sure to try it.
My theory is that the first couple of bits were not as they needed to be, sending inappropriate signals to the camcorder during the export set-up process. In my case, after the first couple of seconds, it synch'd up correctly and was able to proceed with the QT export. In your case, the camera gave up and shut down - and no recovery. How did those first few bits get screwed up? I have no clue.
I have recently completed a Project (Holiday in Spain - about 43 minutes). I successfully burned a DVD, playable on my Liteon DVD Player. However, I could not export it back to the Camera (Panasonic GS-NV 400). All sorts of messages appeared - mostly "you are not in the correct mode" which I was, because at the start of the operation the screen showed NS-GV 400 attached. I tried just to play back the Project via the camera, which I had done many times during the editing stage, but although the camera LCD showed the initial screen, as soon as I hit the start button, there was a click from the camera and a message appeared saying that connexion with the camera had been lost. I found,though, that the original "clips" played perfectly through the camera. Aha, I concluded, there's nothing wrong with the Camera.
I have solved this problem by very tediously creating another Project, transferring clips, music and voice-overs from the problem one. All seems to be well.
As I say, I have solved this problem, but I have no idea what was causing it. Anyone any ideas, please?

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