Importing To External Storage

[indiedave]

I'm wondering if anyone can help me. I'm new to mac's, slowly becoming addicted. Anyway I'm importing film from a Mini DV via Firewire, and using iMovie '08 to edit. However when I import video, which I've been able to do no problems, I want to import the video to my external hard-drive, rather than MacHD. There is a drop down menu from "Save To" where I was hoping to see my external but its not there.

The external is recognised on my desktop, so I'm a little bit confused. There doesn't appear to be an option in the Preferences section. Is what I'm doing possible, to import direct to the external, to will I have to import onto the MacHD and then move to the external.

Any help is much appreciated.

 

[cgingrich]

My guess would be that you would have to import to your internal HD then move to external. I'm actually going to be investigating this a little more as I just got an AVCHD camcorder and the imported files are huge, I'll let you know what I find out.

edit: Also if your external is not showing up on your desktop, that IS a problem...try reconnecting it, you may have accidentally ejected it.

 

[indiedave]

The external is being recognised. The bad thing is I've only got 12GB available so I'd prefer to have all my video imported to the external. What I'll probably end up doing is move all the music to my external, but I use that a lot, more so than the video.

Let me know what you find out, appreciate it.

 

[cgingrich]

As far as the music goes....I have my entire iTunes library running off of my external WD MyBook via Firewire 800. I rarely ever have slowdowns when playing music and I share my music over my network as well, so that is an option that will free some space off of your internal either way.

 

[liquidoz]

Hi indiedave - We're in the same boat...I just switched, becoming addicted and have been working with importing to externl hd. Unfortunately, I don't know that I can help much because I was able to select my EHD from the dialog box you referenced.

Are you able to read/write to the HD? Tried stepping through reboot and connections?

I'll see what I can find...

 

[cgingrich]

Just got the SD5 out of the box, shot some quick video here in the house, and imported it. First I gotta say I didn't get to play with the settings because I had no battery and had to use AC, but low light looks awful! It looks about the same quality as video I take from my Canon SD1000 digicam. I'm really hoping I don't have it on best quality settings or something, I'm gonna try some outside shots tomorrow.

As for the importing, I was also able to select my external for import....I must say that my worries for the AVCHD format were put to rest as iMovie seamlessly transfered and was able to scrub and edit the footage. Seems like a nice camera, a lot smaller than I thought (SD9 is even smaller), I look forward to testing it more, good luck with your importing.

 

[indiedave]

yeah I'll pop into the Apple Store on Monday and see if they can help me, I have to say my external harddrives have been really frustrating, I've got a FireLite 40GB that I'd thought is usually the most resposive, a 120GB Western Digital that I really should just be using as a paper weight, its a piece of crap. And then I've got an 80GB Lacie that refuses to reformat itself and so I can't put anything on it.

Oh dear.

Thanks for all the overnight responses.