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kmcarmack

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Oct 15, 2008
4
0
I am a PC user looking into buying one of the new macbooks, but like everyone else am disappointed in the fact that they lack firewire. I would like to use iMovie to edit videos recorded on my minidv camcorder, but I'm not sure how this will work without a firewire port on the macbook. Firewire is the only way my camcorder will transfer video, the USB works only for transferring still pictures. If I were to capture the video using my PC, and save it to an external USB hard drive, would I then be able to open it in iMovie? Not really looking forward to having to add that extra step, but I really like the new macbooks and don't think I can afford the MBP (besides the fact that I don't really need any of the features other than firewire). Thanks!
 
... If I were to capture the video using my PC, and save it to an external USB hard drive, would I then be able to open it in iMovie? ...
If you capture in a QuickTime-compatible format, then yes. Otherwise, you will have to transcode to a QuickTime-compatible format.
 
I'm having the exact same problem, I also have a miniDV camera and will buy one of the new macbooks this weekend hopefully. I was about to start a new thread until I read this, figured I would ask here instead:

-As I'm new to the whole Mac OS, does my external USB hard drive need to be formatted differently to be accepted by both Mac and PC (to be able to transfer files)???

-Also, I capture with the native aspects on a PC (don't really know them but I know that they can be HUGE files, and show up as AVI uncompressed), so will I have any problem opening this files in iMovie? Or will I have troubles transferring huge (6 to 12 GB) files over the external hard drive???
 
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