Would this work? (transfering video off of a firewire camera)

[Cdes]

I have an older macbook that i have never been able to load my videos off of my camera into because of a lack of memory. I was already planning to get one of the new macbooks when they came out, but was also hoping to be able to save and edit videos on it. The lack of a firewire port of course poses a problem. I've been thinking of a few scenarios and wondering if this would work:

Could I plug the camera into my old macbook, open imovie, but save the video to an external hardrive or time capsule (if i decide to get it), and then access it through my new macbook?

I'm sorry if this is a dumb question, I am just pretty clueless when it comes to what I should do.

 

[NRose8989]

Memory? Do you mean lack of hard drive space?

Anyways yes is can be done easily, Just put the transcoded clips onto a external hard drive then plug that HD into your new MB and transfer the clips onto your new MB's local drive. I wouldn't recommend using a time capsule via wireless (or even a USB external hard drive) because of speed issues. Though on paper, I suppose if your connected via ethernet, it could work fast enough. Again not sure but I guess it worth a shot.

 

[Cdes]

thanks, and yes i meant hard drive space

 

[ftaok]

Here's my suggestion.

Buy a decent Firewire/USB2 hard drive (or better yet, buy an external enclosure and a decent 7200RPM HDD) and use that to house your iMovie Library. As long as you're using iMovie'08, you should be able to do this without a hitch.

ft

 

[heron88]

It should work just fine.

 

[RedTomato]

All macbooks, even the oldest ones, are damn powerful laptops. (I'm talking about macbooks, not ibooks). It's very easy to add more RAM or replace the HD for more space.

If your internal HD is full, you can buy a large new one pretty cheaply, or buy a firewire external enclosure with HD in it pretty cheap too.

Make sure your firewire external has two firewire ports, then you can plug the camera into the external, and the external into your macbook at the same time, and transfer direct from the camera onto the external.

Conect everything up, Open iMovie, start a new project, and save it on the external, then turn on the camera. It should be obvious from there.

 

[Cdes]

Here's my suggestion.
As long as you're using iMovie'08, you should be able to do this without a hitch.

ft

On my old macbook I have iMovie HD and not '08. Will this pose a problem if I'd like to access the video on a new macbook (my old macbook doesn't have dvd-rw, so I would need the new one for that).

 

[ftaok]

On my old macbook I have iMovie HD and not '08. Will this pose a problem if I'd like to access the video on a new macbook (my old macbook doesn't have dvd-rw, so I would need the new one for that).

It shouldn't be a problem. I suggested iMovie'08 because of the way I read your original question. This is because of the way '08 and '06 handles importing.

iMovie'06 (aka iMovieHD) imports video into a specific project file. iMovie'08 imports video into a Library.

For your use, you could do both, just make sure you load iMovieHD onto the new Macbook if you go that route. Just use the external HDD to store your Library or Project files when you import with the old MB and hook it up to the new MB when you want to work on projects.

I would avoid importing to a networked HDD (i.e. Time Capsule) because of throughput issues and video dropouts. You're safer importing directly to a fast HDD using FW.

ft