iMovie 6 & iDVD: The Missing Manual

Importing Camcorder Footage

Suppose you’ve opened iMovie and clicked the Create a New Project button. At this moment, then, you’re looking at an empty version of the screen shown in Figure 4-5. Connect your camcorder to the FireWire cable and turn it on. This is where the fun begins.

Click the little movie-camera symbol on the iMovie screen, if necessary, to switch into Camera Mode, as shown in Figure 4-6.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONSaving to External FireWire Drives

I need more hard drive space. What should I do? Can I save a project onto an external FireWire drive?

It’s a natural question; most Macs have two FireWire jacks. What better way to capitalize on them than by hooking up the camcorder and an external FireWire hard drive simultaneously?

For example, at the time of this writing, you can get a 160 GB FireWire hard drive for under $160 (from http://www.macsales.com, for example), which is enough to hold over 12 hours of footage. And the prices are falling rapidly.

Like most FireWire gear, these hard drives have several advantages over hard drives you may have known in the past. They’re smaller and faster, can be plugged and unplugged from the computer without turning anything off, and don’t require power cords of their own.

Tip

If you turn on your camcorder after iMovie is already running, the program conveniently switches into Camera Mode. (iMovie only does so the first time you power up the camcorder during a work session, however, to avoid annoying people who turn the camcorder ...