Importing videos from my video cam to imovie? (apple/mac)?

Question

okay here's the deal. i have a mac laptop and i try to import my videos on to imovie. but when i go to the importing mode there's no import button there's just a button that says, record with isight, and i don't want to record with isight i want to put in my videos!!!!!! how do i switch it so i can import again?

Answer 1

You have to convert your video to mp4 or mov video at first, then you can add it to iMovie. if you don't know how to convert video, here is a step by step guide for you

http://www.mac-dvd.com/mac-guide/how-to-...

If you have any other questions, feel free to contact me.

Answer 2

If you have a miniDV tape based camcorder, then you need to have the camcorder in "Play/Edit" mode and connected to your Mac with a firewire cable. USB will not work. If this is all done, then you need to go into System Preferences and turn the iSight camera off.

If you are using a hard drive or flash memory based camcorder, you will not import directly to iMovie - you will copy the video files from that memory. Go to http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/vi... to download and install StreamClip - you will need it convert the highly compressed MPEG2 files to something iMovie can understand (like DV or .mov type files). Once the files are converted, then you can drag the converted file to iMovie's clips pane or timeline.

If you are using a DVD based camcorder, do not put the mini-optical disc in the slot loading drive - you need to either:

1) Use a drawer loading DVD drive (like those from LaCie) and rip the video using something like HandBrake

http://handbrake.fr/

or

2) You need to get an Analog/Digital bridge like one of those from Canopus that connects using Firewire (not USB): http://canopus.com/products/videoconvers...

Connect the camcorder with the AV cable to the A/D bridge; connect the A/D bridge to the computer's firewire port.