[yongfook]

Finally bought a DV camera yesterday (Panasonic NV-GS5). Never used one before, it was a Japanese model (my iBook is from the UK), and came out after the version of iMovie which I have on my 600mhz iBook.

I was really worried that:

a) I wouldnt be able to figure out how to import DV into my iBook

b) the iBook just wouldnt recognise the camera

and

c) the iBook would be too slow to handle DV editing.

How these fears were dashed as soon as I plugged in the firewire cable, wondering what would happen. iMovie said "camera connected" and I smiled from ear to ear. Clicked import, and my DV was transferred. Completely intuitive.

I know some of you will be thinking "so what?" but this was all so amazing to me. Previously a longterm PC user, this process would have been MUCH more complicated on a Windows platform I imagine - getting drivers and the actual DV editing software in the first place would be a chore.

but with macs?

Its all included.

Going to make my first proper 'movie' this weekend

[zigzag]

Congratulations - iMovie is a terrific piece of consumer software, I use it every day.

One piece of advice - before you upgrade to iMovie3, make sure you keep a copy of iMovie2 on your machine. I upgraded to iMovie3 and found out that it was way too slow and buggy. I spent an entire day reverting to iMovie2, which I had not kept a copy of (iMovie3 over-writes it).

Of course, if you're already using iMovie3 with no problems, that's great.