[Loyalty4Life]

I'm using a Mac Pro with iMovie 08 and the Canon HF100 (it uses AVCHD with SD card).

I tried it out today, used a card reader that came with my 16GB card. Imported no problem in iMovie. So I recorded another piece of video, about 5 minutes long. Did the same thing, it took a few minutes to import. But when it said completed, under the Events window in iMovie, the event appeared, but there was no video the editing window. I tried again--no results. I tried just connecting via USB cable with my camcorder and computer. It imported just fine, but there was nothing in the editing window...

I did see that the file did import onto my computer. It's in the Movies > iMovie Events > Name of Event folder. It's a .mov file. I tried dragging the file into iMovie. No success.

I noticed that on the camcorder support page on Apple, it says this:

"Each camcorder has been tested using NTSC models; PAL models that have been tested are indicated with an asterisk (*)."

The HF100 had an asterisk by its name. So I tried importing with the PAL format under Preferences, still no success.

Any ideas on what to do? I would be most grateful for any assistance. Thanks.

[Loyalty4Life]

On further review, in the Movies > iMovie Events > Name of Event folder, the cache folder is in there, the thumbnail folder isn't.

The other small clips I've imported (1 min or so) work fine, yet the only big one I've shot (5 min) doesn't have a thumbnail folder.

Any ideas on how to fix this? Thanks again.

[Loyalty4Life]

Well, I just shot another bit of footage. About 10 minutes worth. I transferred the files to the computer, but it didn't generate the thumbnails after the import and the thumbnail folder didn't show up.

Does this problem have to do with how long the footage is? My short 1-3 minute clips seem to work fine. Longer ones don't. This is my preliminary guess.

Any idea how to fix this?

[mduell]

I just imported a couple hours worth of clips with no problems*.

* Except that iMovie doesn't really support AVCHD, so it converts it to some other format, making the files 3x bigger with lower quality.

[kinokeith]

If the raw avchd files can be accessed through mounting the camcorder or off a card reader, you can convert the files with an application called Voltaic. It is nice to just drag the files off my hard drive camcorder and then batch convert them overnight.

VoltaicHD for Mac! | AVCHD, high definition, video converter, mac software | ShedWorx

[analogika]

Or ffmpegX, which works fine as the free version (no stupid 50MB limit until you drop $30 like VoltaicHD), but won't do batch-conversions unless you pay: ffmpegX a DVD, SVCD, VCD, CVD, VOB, DivX, XviD, H.264, PSP, iPod, MP4, MOV encoder for Mac OSX