iMovie 08: At last, a solution for DVD camcorder owners

Though the DVD based camcorders are great for shooting videos with an advantage of instant playback on any DVD player, they suffer from one major disadvantage: Poor support for editing. Almost every video editor on the earth supports the DV format, but most of them do not support a direct import from DVD camcorders. I have been disappointed with my purchase of the Sony DCR DVD 803E because of this. Neither Windows Movie Maker nor earlier versions of iMovie supported direct import from DVD camcorders.

DVD camcorder owners will be delighted to know that iMovie 08 supports direct import of videos from DVD camcorders. Once videos are imported, then creating a new project is as easy as editing any DV movie. You can mix and match clips from different sources and create that nice holiday movie. To see whether your camera is supported, visit this Apple link. Even though my camcorder model is not listed as supported, iMovie still imported my videos like a charm.

Make sure you have finalized your DVD on the camera before you connect it, otherwise, iMovie offers you to format your DVD- which is a little dangerous option. Also, do not chose VR mode when you format the DVD before shooting, as iMovie does not support importing in this format.

iMovie also supports importing from hard drive based camcorders, which are becoming very popular these days.