Cant import movie from Panasonic Video Cam

[Aikiman]

I just bought this new Panasonic SDR-SW20 video cam for my wife for christmas and we are trying to import the movies we shot into iMovie or at least copy them onto my desktop. The manual says the movie format is mpeg4 but the file extension on the SD card is .MOD. Also in list view under kind it says Unix Executable file which suggests to me its a windows formatted file. Maybe I needed to reformat the SD card or something?? Anyway iMovie cant import them and Quicktime Pro wont play them, what can I do?

 

[CaptainChunk]

I just bought this new Panasonic SDR-SW20 video cam for my wife for christmas and we are trying to import the movies we shot into iMovie or at least copy them onto my desktop. The manual says the movie format is mpeg4 but the file extension on the SD card is .MOD. Also in list view under kind it says Unix Executable file which suggests to me its a windows formatted file. Maybe I needed to reformat the SD card or something?? Anyway iMovie cant import them and Quicktime Pro wont play them, what can I do?

You can convert the MOD files to different format (like DV, for example) using MPEG Streamclip (free download).

 

[Aikiman]

You can convert the MOD files to different format (like DV, for example) using MPEG Streamclip (free download).

Thanks for your help, so far it looks promising although Streamclip wont convert mpeg2 files unless I buy the plugin from Apple. Is there any other options or do you think I should purchase this?