Am I missing something in importing?

[Styve100]

Hi all, relativley new to none tape cameras and I am getting swampped with info regarding importing.
I have a JVC everio 155 HDD camera dn have been using this for about a year. I have searched for info regards importing and some of the suggestions dont work on my intel imac.
I do not see an import windows with the files on, I get the usual import window in imovie such as you would with a tape camera. Is this an ok way to import my video ratehr than moving 'files' about and converting? Am I losing something in importing this way?
I have just bought a panasonic tm10 but havent really used this yet.

 

[spinnerlys]

Your camera most likely uses a highly compressed codec to store the videos on the camera's HDD, and when iMovie offers you to import the video of the connected camera, it gets converted to a file or files with a less compressed codec like DV or AIC (Apple Intermediate Codec) as they are better suited for editing. They store every frame of a video file, which highly compressed video files do not.
After the conversion is done, the resulting NEW file will be saved in Users/You/Movies/iMovie/... .
You can still store the highly compressed original footage in some other way if that is what you want.

 

[matteusclement]

AIC = big

just a comment that if you are saving to AIC, get some extra hard drive space. one hour of apple intermediate codec takes 36 gigs.

 

[bmcgonag]

From what I've seen of my Everio, it uses a file with extension .mod. This is an mpeg file. Through iMovie '08 it would not import directly, and you therefore had to go into the camera's drive, move the files to your computer drive, then convert to an iMovie friendly format like .dv

With iMovie '09 I've been able to import the files directly to iMovie and it does all the converting for me. It sounds like this is what you are seeing, and if so, then that is definitely the way to go. Less steps for the same result.

Beyond that, check out my posts on this forum, and my recent post at the website in my sig for other methods. If that still doesn't work, contact me and I"ll do my best to help you get through this with a little pain as possible.