iMovie '09 & iDVD: The Missing Manual

Importing from Tapeless Camcorders

The beauty of tapeless camcorders is that, because they store video as computer files on a hard drive, on a DVD, or in memory, you don't have to wait for them to play into your Mac in real time. Instead, the importing process takes only as much time as iMovie needs to copy those files onto your Mac's hard drive. (At least in theory; read on.)

Note

If your camcorder records onto miniature DVDs, see Importing from DVD Camcorders for some additional notes.

Once you're ready to transfer some video from your camcorder, here's what to do:

1. Connect the camcorder's USB cable to your Mac.

   Most tapeless camcorders connect to the Mac using a USB cable, which comes right in the box. It connects to any of the Mac's skinny rectangular USB jacks, as shown in Figure 1-7. (If you have one of those tiny, very popular Flip camcorders, plug in its pop-out USB jack instead.)

   

   Figure 1-7. Tapeless camcorders generally come with a USB cable. The little end plugs into the camcorder (you may have to open some tiny plastic doors on the camera to find the jack). The big end plugs into any of your Mac's USB jacks.

   UP TO SPEED: The Definition of an Event

   In iMovie terms, an Event is an organizational tool, like a label or a filing folder.

   Sometimes, what constitutes an Event is obvious. A wedding, a graduation, a birthday party, and a ski trip would all be considered individual Events. You'd want all of the video scenes for somebody's wedding filed under a single heading, even if they were filmed over the course of a whole wedding weekend.

   Sometimes, though, "Event" is a little nebulous. What if you film little scenes of your new baby every other day for a couple of months? Would they all be one Event called "August"? Or would you have a lot of little Events like "Overturned spaghetti bowl" and "First steps"?

   Or what if you take a 10-day cruise, featuring a stop every other day in a different port of call? Would the Event be "Mediterranean Cruise"? Or would you create individual Events for "Naples," "Monaco," and "Tunisia"?

   The answer is, of course, "That's up to you." And that's why the options in Figure 1-5 appear at this point. If you want to create a new Event, type a name for it into the "Create new Event" box. But if you're importing more footage into an Event category you've already created, click "Add to existing Event," and then choose which Event from the pop-up menu.

   Note: If you opt to create a new Event, you're also offered a checkbox called "Split days into new Events." If this option is turned on, then each day's worth of shooting becomes an Event all its own, even if it was all shot on the same vacation or wedding weekend. iMovie automatically adds day numbers to the Event names, like "Wedding – Day 1" and "Wedding – Day 2."

   Note

   If you're using an original Flip or Flip Ultra camera, you need to install the 3vix codec software that comes with your camera. When your Flip is connected, find its icon on your desktop. Double-click it to open a window containing the "Flip Video for Mac" installer software. Double-click the installer icon to get the necessary codec (The Export Pop-up Menu). Once you've done that, iMovie can talk to your Flip camera without a problem.

2. Turn on the camcorder. Switch it into PC mode.

   The wording might vary, but every tapeless camcorder has a mode for making PC or Mac connections (Figure 1-8).

   At this point, iMovie should open automatically, if it wasn't open already. If everything is going well, a message appears at the top of the screen that says, "Generating thumbnails." Then, after a minute, you see the Importing screen depicted in Figure 1-9.

   If iMovie doesn't open, or if the Importing screen doesn't appear, then choose File → Import From Camera, or run through the troubleshooting steps described on iMovie Doesn't See the Tapeless Camcorder.

   

   Figure 1-8. Every camcorder has a switch or command that lets you connect it to a PC (or, in this case, a Mac). Most tapeless camcorders have a dedicated position on the main mode dial for this purpose, like this one.

   

   Figure 1-9. You can select individual scenes for importing without rewinding or fast-forwarding. You can also preview the recorded scenes before you bother importing them to the Mac. If your intention is to bring in most of the clips, just turn off the checkboxes that you don't want. If you want to import less than half of them, though, click Uncheck All, and then turn the checkboxes back on for the shots that you do want.

   FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTION: Reclaiming Disk Space

   I'm worried about using the Automatic importing option. It seems like overkill if it brings in a whole hour of video, and I wind up using only 10 minutes of it.

   Yes, it's true that imported digital video eats up 13 gigabytes of disk space per hour of footage. (And that's standard-definition video. High-definition video eats up 40 gigs, at least if you choose the Full option described on Automatic Scene Detection.)

   The good news: As you work on your project, you can always delete the pieces you're not using—and reclaim the disk space they were using.

   Details appear on Space Saver, but the point is this iMovie '09 feature is a big improvement over the previous iMovie version, where deleting part of a clip did not, in fact, reclaim any disk space. (iMovie 6 hung onto the entire clip, behind the scenes, just in case you ever changed your mind about which piece you were using in your movie.)

   You're about to experience one huge payoff of using a tapeless camcorder: instant access to individual scenes on the camcorder. That means, first of all, that you don't have to rewind or fast-forward to find a certain shot. Furthermore, as you can see in Figure 1-9, iMovie lets you import only the shots you want, leaving the duds behind. That feature alone can represent a huge time savings over the old "import the whole tape" method.

   Tip

   If your camcorder stores its video on memory cards—SD cards, for example—then you have another option at this juncture. You could remove the card from the camcorder and insert it into a card reader that's attached to your Mac. (Card readers are super cheap—under $10. They're like tiny disk drives that attach to your Mac's USB jack.) The advantage of the card-reader method is that you don't use up the camcorder's battery power while you're transferring your video.

3. Inspect the shots on the camcorder to see what's worth importing.

   To play a shot, click its thumbnail and then click the ► button. Click the or buttons to skip to the previous or next shot on the camcorder (or just click the thumbnails on the screen in front of you).

4. Specify which shots you want to import.

   If you want to import everything on the camcorder, click Import All; then skip to step 5.

   If you want to import only some of the shots, move the Automatic/Manual switch in the lower-left corner of the Import window to Manual. Now you'll see little checkboxes appear on the shot thumbnails. All of them start out with checkmarks, meaning that iMovie intends to import all of them. See Figure 1-9 for tips on selecting the scenes you want. Once the correct shots have checkmarks, click Import Checked.

   At this point, the top of the window sprouts a little sheet of options (see Figure 1-10).

5. Indicate where you want to save the transferred video clips.

   Most people save the incoming clips onto the main Mac hard drive. But if you've bought additional hard drives to hold your movies, you can use the "Save to" pop-up menu to choose a different hard drive to hold your video.

6. Specify an Event.

   The pair of choices shown in Figure 1-10 lets you answer these questions: Were the scenes you're about to import filmed at a new Event? Or should they more properly be filed along with scenes you've already imported as part of an existing Event? See the box on Importing from Tapeless Camcorders for the definition of an Event—and suggestions on what to choose here.

7. If you have a high-def camcorder, choose either "Large – 960 x 540" or "Full – 1920 x 1080".

   You may not see the final option shown in Figure 1-10. It appears only when you're importing video from a high-definition camcorder, one that captures video in the so-called 1080i format. See the box on Automatic Scene Detection for a discussion of this option and advice on what to choose.

8. Turn on "Analyze for stabilization after import", if you've got the time.

   The built-in footage stabilizer is one of iMovie's most important, and most effective, new features. It converts unsteady video into footage that looks as though the camera was on a tripod—but this "analysis" can take hours. See step 5 on page 30 for help in making this decision.

   

   Figure 1-10. This dialog box looks just like the one that appears when you import from tape. Once again, it wants to know: Where do you want to save the incoming clips (which hard drive)? What Event do they belong to? And how big do you really need the hard drive footage to be?

9. Click Import.

   Now iMovie swings into action. It begins slurping in the video from the camcorder's hard drive, DVD, or memory card. As it works, a progress counter ticks off the remaining shots left to import (Figure 1-11).

   

   Figure 1-11. Top: The counter here not only tells you how much longer you have to wait in "minutes:seconds" format, but also shows you how many video shots remain to be imported. Bottom: When it's all over, the word "Imported" appears on each thumbnail.That's a handy reminder when you've only opted to import some of the clips.

   Considering that fact that a tapeless camcorder is supposed to spare you the real-time importing process of a tape, you may be surprised at how much time the importing takes. AVCHD footage, in particular (Camcorder Features: Which Are Worthwhile?), takes a long time because iMovie has to convert it into an editable format; depending on the speed of your computer, you may wind up waiting 2.5 minutes for each minute of video. An hour's worth of video, in other words, can take two and a half hours to import. You've been warned.

   But never mind that; once the job is done, a message appears to congratulate you. It lets you know how many minutes and seconds of video you've imported, total, and how many clips (Figure 1-12).

   

   Figure 1-12. Hey, you did it! You successfully imported some video from the camcorder to the Mac. You can now turn off the camcorder and put it away.

   UP TO SPEED: Camera Archives: The Quick-Camcorder-Dump Trick

   One big problem with tapeless camcorders is that, well, they're tapeless. If you're on a four-day trip to Disneyworld and the camcorder fills up after one day, you're finished. You can't exactly duck into a drugstore and buy a new hard drive. Until you empty out your camcorder onto your Mac (or start deleting stuff from the camcorder), you're dead in the water.

   You could, of course, travel with a laptop, and empty out your camcorder into iMovie at the end of each day. The problem there is that if it's a high-def camcorder, iMovie will automatically convert the footage into its Apple Intermediate format (described in the box on Importing Old iMovie Projects). And the problem there is that this conversion takes forever—and eats up a lot more space on the hard drive than the original files from the camcorder do.

   There's a cool, completely under-hyped new feature in iMovie '09 that rather neatly solves these problems. It's called the Camera Archive, and it's designed to let you empty out the camera onto the Mac's hard drive in one simple step. There's no format conversion, no choices to make, no weeding out the bad clips; it just empties the camcorder in a hurry. You can open up the dumped footage in iMovie later, when you have more time and disk space.

   To use this feature, begin following steps 1-2 on Importing from Tapeless Camcorders. But when the Import window appears, click the Archive All button at the bottom of the window. iMovie asks you to choose a folder location (your Desktop is a good bet) and folder name (iMovie proposes the camcorder name and today's date)—and then gets right to work sucking in all the contents from the camcorder. When it's all over, you'll find a folder called Samsung 08-22-09 (or whatever), filled with video files in the camcorder's original format, like AVCHD. Nothing, at this point, has been imported into iMovie itself.

   (Actually, the archive folder probably has other folders within it, containing still photos, audio files, and whatever else was on the camcorder. Great way to grab everything off the camcorder.)

   Later, when you're back from Disneyworld and have more time, you can open up iMovie and choose File → Import → Camera Archive. Click the archive folder and then click Import. iMovie opens up its standard Import window, exactly as though the camcorder is connected (which is pretty freaky). Proceed to import the video files into iMovie from step 3, exactly as described on Importing from DVD Camcorders.

10. Click OK.

    The congratulations message goes away.

11. Click to eject the camcorder, and then click Done.

    The Import screen goes away. You arrive at the main iMovie screen, where your new video appears in the Events list at the left side of the screen. Fine-Tuning the Events List describes this structure in more detail.

You can now turn off the camcorder to save battery power, if you like.