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Editing with H.264 manageable?

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I'm looking at getting an HD camcorder that uses H.264 compression but from what I've heard it's no the best codec for editing. I tried to load a 30 second movie clip in H.264 to iMovie and it took a good 5 minutes, I'm afraid if I shoot anything longer than that with my camera that the files will not be manageable for me to edit. Any suggestions?
 
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I personally would play the files from the camcorder and capture them as they play. Would take longer than just copying the files over but at least that way they're sure to work and be efficient to edit. I don't have too much luck editing in H.264.
 
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I personally would play the files from the camcorder and capture them as they play. Would take longer than just copying the files over but at least that way they're sure to work and be efficient to edit. I don't have too much luck editing in H.264.

can you elaborate on that? I'm brand new to video editing :) what apps are good for capturing streaming video straight from a camera? what codecs are best to use for editing? I'm not doing anything Hollywood quality I just wanna add some music and transition effects to my films
 
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iMovie HD will take a long time to load the H.264 format movie.
What I do just convert it to AVI, and it is suitable to edit in iMovie.
 
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iMovie HD will take a long time to load the H.264 format movie.
What I do just convert it to AVI, and it is suitable to edit in iMovie.

but doesn't iMovie convert the video into a different format for editing anyway? Would I really be saving time converting to AVI then importing it into iMovie?
 
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iMovie converts everything you import into the format you've chosen to make the project in so I don't think you'd be saving any time converting it twice. Plus you run the risk of loosing quality by converting files twice.
 
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iMovie converts everything you import into the format you've chosen to make the project in so I don't think you'd be saving any time converting it twice. Plus you run the risk of loosing quality by converting files twice.

I didn't know you could change the format of the project, is it possible to use the H.264 codec then? or did I misunderstand..?
 
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I imported H.264 into iMovie, it really took long time, since iMovie may anylize every frame to enable you to edit it. I found that iMovie can handle avi format very quickly, so I just convert them to avi and edit them by iMovie.
 

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