iMovie '06 - File Sizes when importing from video camera

[jmFightSpam]

Hi,

This is my first time using IMovie '06. Pretty sweet app. My question is around importing from a video camera (mini-DV camera). I notice if I choose the default video format (DV), 10 minutes of video takes about 2.25 GB of disk space. That is a lot. I understand it is because of the high quality.

How do I import video from my camera at a quality that takes the lowest amount of disk space. What preferences do I set?

Thanks.

 

[Makosuke]

Presuming you have a MiniDV video camera, you basically don't. The DV format is encoded directly to tape, and it's pulled directly off by iMovie. iMovie was, at least originally, intended to use it as its "base" format, since DV is pretty good for non-linear editing.

iMovie 06 can, I think, use other formats now, so I suppose you could use QuickTime Pro or somesuch to re-compress your DV video into another format then use that, but that's a lot of time and effort--I expect you'd be better off just spending a few bucks for a larger hard drive.