Is it a pain importing Mini DV footage to iMovie?

Capturing MiniDV footage is easy on any system, Mac or PC, but it's done in real time i.e. an hour of video takes an hour to capture. Playing them back is a different issue though - you can plug the camcorder into a TV and use it like a VCR.

Have you tried using StreamClip http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/video/mpegstreamclip.html to convert the HDD files from the very highly compressed MPEG2 files the HDD (and flash memory) camcorder produce? Do you have to download them for immediate playback? How about just rewinding the miniDV tape to the start of the last presentation and play that back from the camcorder connected to a TV? What experience are you looking for in the importing of DV from miniDV tape to a Mac G4? My son's G4 PowerBook with iMovie takes standard definition DV in at real-time - that is, 8 minutes of DV takes 8 minutes to import. But that is normal - and the same for all Macs (whether G4, G5 - which I use - or Intel-Mac (also in the house) or PCs importing DV from miniDV tape. Upgrading to a faster processor (and newer machine) is always helpful when it comes to CPU-intensive tasks, but this will not speed the Real-time DV import. High Definition video is a different - but similar story. HDV takes longer than realtime and requires you to install the Apple Intermediate Codec using "custom install" of the QuickTime component from the MacOSX system discs. Import time is longer than real-time and very dependent on CPU speed for the rendering. iLife08/iMovie08 can handle HDD footage - again, I believe StreamClip is still required - but a G5 will not handle AVCHD compressed high definition video because and Intel-Mac is required. So... to answer your question directly, "Is it a pain importing Mini DV footage to iMovie?" No. It is not - if standard definition, then all you need is a 4-pin to 6-pin firewire cable to connect the DV port on the miniDV camcorder to the firewire 400 port on the Mac... Import through iMovie. 15 minute presentation takes 15 minutes to import. StreamClip will take some time to convert the data files... Here's an alternative that just worked with my Sony HDR-HC1 (though it should work with any miniDV tape camcorder: Connect your camcorder with the firewire cable, and launch iMovie... Press record on the camcorder (you need a tape in it) AND press import on iMovie. I just recorded several minutes - real-time - on the tape and straight into iMovieHD05. I tried just importing without hitting record on the camcorder with mixed (not good) results. When the camcorder is recording at the same time, it worked great and consistently... so, presuming this works, there is NO transfer time. BE CAREFUL, standard definition video uses about 13 gig per hour onto the hard drive. I presume that G4 does not have much available hard drive space and you NEVER want to get below 10% available space.