Screencast: Import from Digital Camera


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1 Plug in Your Digital Camera

If the footage is on your digital camera, you will need to plug it in and power it up. Most cameras show up as a disk drive.

Plug in Camera
Menu Commands

Menus and Commands

Whenever you see a command, such as File > Save Project, it refers to commands in the menu bar (top of the screen).

Keyboard shortcuts are given in parenthesis; for example, (Apple + S) indicates that the apple key should be held and the 'S' key should be pressed once.

2 Open iMovie, Create New Project

Open iMove and create a new project using File > New (Apple + N).

Create a New Project

Name the project, choose a destination and then press Create

3 Import the Videos

Use File > Import (Apple + Shift + I), and browse to your camera. Select all the video files you plan to use and click open.

Import from Camera

Trouble Importing or Finding the Video on Your Camera?

If you cannot use or find the videos, they probably aren't in a Mac compatible format (the files might end in .avi or .wmv).

You can try converting them to the .mp4 format with the free video transcoding software ffmpegX

4 Videos Appear in the Clip Library

Now the footage should appear in the clips library. Just click on the name of a clip to rename it.

Import a File

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