iMovie 6 & iDVD: The Missing Manual

High-Definition Camcorders

Even in its second edition, iMovie HD 6 is by far the least expensive software capable of importing and editing video from high-definition camcorders. (It’s about $750 less expensive than the next contender.)

But first, some definitions:

power users’ clinicHDV, Apple Intermediate Codec, and You

If you’ve been merrily reading along, learning all kinds of new things about high-definition video, one apparent contradiction in this chapter might already be bugging your subconscious.

First you read that an HDV camcorder stores a full hour of high-definition video on a 60-minute Mini-DV tape—a cassette designed to hold 60 minutes of standard-definition video.

And then you read that HDV video takes up three or four times as much hard drive space as standard DV.

Which is it? Does HDV footage take up the same amount of disk space as standard DV, or does it take up much more?

Answer: It takes up much more, unless it’s massively compressed. That’s the most amazing part of the circuitry in today’s HDV consumer camcorders: It manages to compress all of that information in real time, so that it fits in the same amount of tape as standard DV.

Your Mac, however, is not quite as dedicated a machine. Even the fastest Mac wouldn’t be able to edit HDV footage in its original, super-compressed form. It’d be like: click to select a clip, wait; scroll to a later place in the clip, wait; hit the Space bar to play it, wait; and so on.

So Apple did something very clever in iMovie HD: ...