Canon Vixia HF200 Does import into iMovie !!!

after all the bullcrap ive read everywhere and people posting it can't be done, YOUR WRONG! It's Simple,

1)make sure you have enough memory for an import
2)plug in camcorder and power adapter
3)open imovie
4)press sync button on bottom right hand corner of screen (click computer import)
5)WALAAAA your imovie is reconizing camcorder


I would have to say im SOOOOOO impressesed with the Canon Vixia HF200

the quality is great, the price is way down, and ease of syncing is EASY, once you know how to do it. I feel sorry for all the suckers who have been listening to all the dudes saying YOU CANT DO IT!!!

parese

All you had to do is ask here - it's a well known camcorder to work with iMovie (08 and later), FCE and FCP (6.06 and later)

Glad your enjoying it, I had the earlier gen version (HF100) but have since upgraded to an HMC40. The HF series camcorders do produce wonderful output. Of course, pre native PF record modes, dealing with PF24 or PF30 over 60i wasn't necessarily fun.

Nethfel said:

All you had to do is ask here - it's a well known camcorder to work with iMovie (08 and later), FCE and FCP (6.06 and later)

Glad your enjoying it, I had the earlier gen version (HF100) but have since upgraded to an HMC40. The HF series camcorders do produce wonderful output. Of course, pre native PF record modes, dealing with PF24 or PF30 over 60i wasn't necessarily fun.

Click to expand...

Just search up the camcorder and imovie and look at the numerous post's saying that you CAN'T do it. I think its from ppl trying to sell conversion software.

More of it's people who don't understand how to - many try to dig into the AVCHD folder structure and import the .mts/.m2ts streams into iMovie (or FCE or FCP for that matter) and don't realize these editors are not designed to work with the footage like that. It's one of the most common problems that people have here even, but once it's explained to not try to import the individual files, they are usually good to go.

As long as you leave it in the AVCHD structure, you can import it whether the SD card is in the camera, or if you plug the SD card into a reader.

You can also backup your footage to another hard drive from the SD card as long as you transfer the entire AVCHD folder structure; then later if you want to import it (if using iMovie) just transfer it all back over to the SD card so iMovie can recognize it (unlike the way it works in FCE or FCP which allows you to navigate to a folder location storing the AVCHD private folder and have it find the footage for you which is much more convenient).

The biggest problem becomes people who move out the individual files from the folder structure - once out of there (and they usually delete the folder structure) they end up with un-useable files that need to be transcoded prior to importing into iMovie.

Now, the one thing I will mention tho - if you plan to use a format that is pf in the 60i container (ie: 30PF over 60i - I think the HF200 it also still did 24pf over 60i and that they brought native 24p in the HFS200, but still 30pf over 60i) which is Canons interesting way of handling 30p and 24p, you'll need to inverse telecine to get it out of the 60i as I don't believe iMovie will do that - for that matter, honestly, I'm not sure if iMovie supports 24p or 30p (xstep would know - he's one of the iMovie masters here), but if it does you'll probably need to use a tool like JES Deinterlacer to perform an inverse telecine to get the 30p or 24p out of the 60i container.

Really?? I can't get it to work!

Hey all, you all seem pretty sure that it works, so what am I doing wrong?

I have iMovie 9 (8.0.6 (821)) but see no sync button. It recognizes the camera, but when I do an import (it lets me see/select the clips) I get an error "iMovie was not able to import 1 clip from your camera. Click Archive All to make a backup copy of all of the clips from your camera to your hard disk.".

I've made a camera archive and tried from there as well - same error.

You guys talk about going too deep in the file directories, but I don't even get an option for that.

Am I looking in the wrong place? PLEASE HELP!

Cheers,
r.soul

How did you record the footage? (settings, ie: 1080i60, 1080p24, etc.) Do you have an HF200 or an HFS200 or a different model? Do you have SD footage mixed in with the HD footage on the memory card? Do you have photos stored on the memory card? I don't use iMovie a lot so beyond being able to comment on some basic import issues regarding iMovie, I can't detail the exact way to import - but I know it does work without having to dig into the private folder. Someone like XStep knows a lot more about iMovie then I do (I edit primarily with Final Cut Pro or Final Cut Express (depending on which computer I'm sitting at)).

Fixed! Reinstalled....

Thanks Nethfel for the response... Before I had a chance to even read your response I had a hunch and re-installed iMovie just in case. Clearly there are some old Microsoft developers working at Apple now as this somehow fixed it!? No idea why, but it found the camera and imported the video just fine, al beit slowly!

There's a suggestion for others having problems!

Thanks all,
R.Soul.

Yeah, depending on the speed of your machine & amount of ram will determine how long it will take to import footage from an AVCHD camcorder since it all needs to be transcoded to AIC, and transcoding on a slower machine can take a long time.

Hello all. It's clear I'm reviving a very old thread, but I have a very similar question about importing to my Mac from the Vixia HF S200. Using iMovie 08, I've successfully been able to import video files from the camcorder onto my Mac. The process is fairly straightforward and quick. However, I'm noticing an apparent video quality loss. In fact, the Canon AVC-HD files are apparently converted into .mov files during the import. These .mov files, further, have a resolution of only 960 x 540, when I thought I was recording in full 1080.

Is there something I'm doing wrong on import? Or some other method to import from the camcorder without this apparent quality loss?