All entries for Friday 09 May 2008

May 09, 2008

Importing MPG video from a Sony HDD camera to Apple iMovie

UPDATE

Our new iMacs (September 08) will import from the SR1 directly in the normal manner, without the ‘burn to disc’ trick. However, when importing HD footage, all SD footage must be deleted first.

So this is now probably out of date…

Sony HDD (hard disk drive) cameras store footage as MPG files. These can be copied to a MacBook as files via USB, with the Mac treating the camera as an external storage device. Unfortunately, iMovie can’t play the Sony MPG format.

This seems to be a problem for other Sony HDD users.

I just discovered the trick! When the camera connects to the MacBook, choose the option “Disc Burn” on the camera. It then behaves just like an ordinary DV cam, and iMovie will capture and convert the footage.


Robert O'Toole : 09 May 2008 10:23 |  Comments (10) |  Report a problem