How do I get video off of a digital camera onto my mac?

September 6, 2006 6:22 PM

I'm attempting to take video off of my Canon SD200 digital camera (note: not camcorder) and put it onto my Mac PowerBook G4 so I can edit it in iMovie, but I can't figure out how to do it. If this were a PC, I'd have no issue, but my PC is nearly 7 years old, and probably can't handle video, let alone video editing. Do I need a program? Do I need to get my mac to register that the camera is connected? Help?
posted by commasplice to Computers & Internet (4 answers total)

Run Image Capture from your Applications folder, that should let you view all files on your camera and copy them to your Powerbook.
posted by threeze at 6:34 PM on September 6, 2006

Plug it in via USB: It should recognize the camera as a USB drive and iPhoto or iMovie can get it. If not, use ImageBrowser (canon software).

If you can't get that to work (my usb on my canon is broken, so I have to do this), take the SD/MMC/ card, plug it into a card reader, open the drive, copy the movie files to the mac and load driectly into iMovie.

Simple
posted by lalochezia at 6:38 PM on September 6, 2006

Response by poster: Holy Mary Mother of God, it worked. Thank YOU and YOU. And you.
posted by commasplice at 6:49 PM on September 6, 2006

does iMovie recognize the files? because they are usually the same format as a miniDV camera, but in an .avi wrapper.

i need to do something similar soon, but havent go around to it.
posted by joeblough at 8:21 PM on September 6, 2006