In iMovie, can I connect my digital camera so I can see myself on the program?

[clj7]

I want to make a little stop motion video in iMovie 09, but I'd rather use my digital camera than the built in camera on my macbook. So I've connected my camera with USB, is there a way I can view it LIVE on imovie? Or even any other program so I can then import the pictures into iMovie?

Thanks for your time

[nickmcgill]

As far as I know, Digital cameras can't be feed live into iMovie as they are only designed for stills more so than feeding video.
Try getting BTVPro, I have used it many time over the years for time lapse stuff mostly but I think it has support for stop motion etc too.

http://www.bensoftware.com/btv/

[RedTomato]

Not sure if iMovie is good for making a short film from many hundreds of stills. A different program would be advisable. There must be a couple of free ones out there which will stitch together your stills into a sequence. You can then import and edit that movie sequence in imovie.

As for cameras, yup as the man above said, don't think you can get a live image from a still camera into imovie. One way would be to use the live feed from a cheap video camera (you can get cheap ones for $100 or less) and capture the still images click by click using a specialist animation capture application (not imovie).

[MisterMe]

I want to make a little stop motion video ...This is a trivial task in QuickTime Pro.

[Flynnstone]

Check out iStopMotion from Boinx.