It’s 2008, and this is what I have to do to get video files off of my Sony DCR-SR82 HDD Handycam, and into an iMovie-digestible format:
- Download video from the camcorder using the Sony-provided HDD Handycam Utility (crap) within a Windows VM.
- Move videos from the offload directory to ~/Movies/Sony Handycam/Originals on the host system.
- Send the offloaded .mpg files to VisualHub (MP4, highest quality, H.264 encoded), saving to ~/Movies/Sony Handycam/Exports.
- Open iMovie and import Exports/* as new iMovie event, allowing iMovie to move files from Exports to ~/Movies/iMovie Events.
Sony: Please stop sucking ass, and produce some useful software for the creative world’s most popular operating system.
Apple: Please stop sucking ass, and build MPEG-2 handling and playback capability into iMovie and Quicktime, respectively.
UPDATE1: About the MPEG-2 component included with iMovie ‘08
UPDATE2: After raising a stink, I figured that I’d spend a little more time trying to figure out how to make my Handycam work with native iMovie ‘08. Turns out that you have to turn on the camera, wait for OS X pick it up as a USB storage device, and then hang tight for three or four minutes until iMovie detects that your USB storage device is actually a camcorder, and presents the import dialog. I’m glad that I can import native MPEG-2, but am somewhat puzzled by the delay.
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Apple sells a $19 MPEG-2 codec for Quicktime through the Apple Store. Not sure if you tried it, but if you did, didn’t it help?
The Quicktime codec will facilitate playback of MPEG-2 video within Quicktime. It will not, however, get you any closer to being able to edit said video using iMovie ‘08.
It’s also worth pointing out that, for the same price as the Quicktime playback codec, you can have an extremely powerful video conversion utility.
Put into this context, my choice might make a little more sense.
I have the same problem.
Impossible to work with my videcamera SONY SR8, and my MAC OS. I’m going crazy.
Unbelievable that this companies work against each other.
But what to do? 2 minutes of video are like 400MB, is that normal?
Is the silliest thing I’ve ever seen.
The SR8 is a high-definition camcorder, so I would expect that the files are huge.
But generally speaking, it is quite annoying that we can’t get the Sony utilities for Mac OS X. Being able to import movies via iMovie is neat and all, but the Sony suite is actually much easier to work with and provides a little more control over how movies are named, organized and placed.
Silly, indeed.
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