PowerPC G5 and buying a camcorder - HELP!!!!

[gatorfish]

We're about to have twins. We need a camcorder to record all of those cute little "firsts". After tons of research, we wanted and HD version camcorder, only to discover my mac won't work with AVCHD since it's powerpc, not intel. *joy*

SO! We buy a Sony DCR-SR85, using SD (mpeg-2). I'm hoping to use the iMovie 08 I already have downloaded. Only to discover I need to download and use in Quicktime with the mpeg-2 playback component (an add'l $20). I download our first test of video. Yay! But wait... no sound NO SOUND. I call Sony. After 30 minutes, they tell me to call Apple. I call Apple. They tell me to reset the p-ram. What?

I checked the file info on the downloaded viedo and no audio was transported. It's a muxed file. "sometimes it doesn't work" is what Sony said.

I need advice. Should I just return the camera and buy a different brand or is ther a fix to my problem?

I would really have preferred the capability to "Import from camera" directly from iMovie than deal with Quicktime.

 

[gatorfish]

Possible fix

Possible fix for anyone interested!!!

I left the computer a frustrated pregnant woman. My husband did some research after I left and found more people with similar issues. Then he discovered this:

http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/video/mpegstreamclip.html

I opened up one of our videos in the mpeg streamclip program and - tada! SOUND.

I then saved as an mpeg-4 and opened in iMovie. It works.

Regardless to say, this entire procedure to download a video from my new camcorder is a pain in the A$S. But at least it works. I hope others find this tidbit of information helpful!