HD video from SD card (SDHC card) into iMovie?

Question

Hi,
It looks like others have had similar problems, but reading various replies, and being new to Mac and video editing, I can't seem to get the info I need.
While on holiday we bought a Sanyo xacti HD1010 camcorder/still camera. All data is on HC SD cards. When I try and transfer to the iMac, everything goes into iPhoto, the video clips with a green tint to them. I downloaded the latest QT which enables me to play the individual clips, and managed to import the clips to iMovie, but iMovie crashes each time i try and play a clip. Other clips, (not HD ones and from a standard SD card) play and edit fine.
Could someone please assist, as I have three 8GB cards to edit!
I'm also going to need some help installing a 500GB external hard drive to store everything. (We already have over 10 000 photos in iPhoto and about three hours of edited video waiting togo onto DVD)
Many thanks,
DH

Answer 1

I have a similar Sanyo ..not your hi-def Xacti HD1010, but the more low-tech standard-def 'waterproof' VPC-CA8EX..
..which also records - like yours - in MPEG-4 AVC/H.264. But yours is proper hi-def AVCHD H.264.
I put my SDHC cards into a fast SDHC USB2 'Christallo' brand card reader, and import the video from there. The card reader shows on my Desktop as 'XACTI', and then when I start iMovie it automatically detects the 'camera' and starts reading the clips from the card and showing thumbnail images. When I click 'Import All' it whizzes through the clips, importing in a tiny fraction of 'real-time' ..about two seconds for a 1-minute clip.. finally reporting that it "..Imported 21 minutes and 44 seconds from 43 clips.." in less than a minute. Then it spends about 2 minutes generating actual thumbnails of these clips in iMovie '08.
(..It's generally, I find, faster to read a camera's, or camcorder's, images through a separate card reader than reading by connecting a camera to the Mac..)
So my clips don't go through iPhoto ..they're - automatically - imported straight into iMovie '08 on an Intel-powered Mac.
(..Ah, no; it's still churning through thumbnail-generation; that was an estimated 2 minutes for just the first day's clips ..but these clips are split over four separate days' shooting ..now it's finished.)
As you're using a similar codec (method of recording) - although in hi-def, with a wider screen format and a great number of pixels - your imports should, I think, behave similarly to mine, though importing may be slower, as you have more info in each 'frame' of video.
If I open iPhoto after connecting the card reader, iPhoto sees a device called 'Xacti', reads and displays all the photos and video clips, and when I click on 'Import' it briskly brings them all into iPhoto, without the time which iMovie spends generating video thumbnails afterwards.
None of the video clips have "..a green tint to them".
If I then start iMovie, I get the message "iMovie needs to generate thumbnails for the videos in your iPhoto library. This process may take several minutes. You can postpone this operation by clicking Later, but your iPhoto videos will be unavailable until the next time you restart iMovie". ..So there it goes, generating its video thumbnails. After one minute, it thinks that it's still going to take a further 7 minutes to do this..
(..Enough time for me to go and have breakfast all over again!..)
iMovie seizes up and becomes completely unresponsive while it's generating the thumbnails which it wants to display for the Xacti clips stored in iPhoto..
My setup is QuickTime Version 7.5.7 (249.30.1) ..also called Version 7.5.7 (995.26.2) and iMovie version ..well; I can't yet tell you what version (..but it's the latest..) because iMovie is unresponsive while it's creating these darned thumbnails! (..Oh; about another "5 minutes" to go.. this really is a slow way round; importing directly into iMovie in the first place, without using iPhoto, was -f-a-r- faster!..)
Meanwhile, about your hard disc;
It ought to be a FireWire-connected disc, not a USB-connected disc, as USB is far slower for continuous data transfer - such as chunks of video while editing - than FireWire, despite what salespeople tell you in shops.
Assuming it's a FireWire disc, it's probably been pre-formatted for use with a PC, not a Mac, so you'll probably need to format it as 'Mac OS Extended' instead of 'PC Exchange - FAT32'. As it's large - 500GB - you'll probably also need to partition it.
Instead of writing out all over again how to do this, I'll just refer you to another thread - read all the way through, including the bits about 'Options' and choosing 'Apple Partition Map' or 'GUID' - here: http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=8542065#8542065
Ah, now: iMovie; "less than a minute" ..till thumbnails are complete. Yup, here they all are, and playing nicely. At last!
So; I can tell you what my Sanyo Xacti (standard-def, 4:3 shaped movies) does ..or rather, how importing works. So it should work just the same - I guess - with yours.
I don't have any conflicting codecs which I could have downloaded and which might interfere with iMovie - do you?
But I would guess that the crashing is more likely related to "..we seem to have used 295 so only 5 G left.." ..ANY Mac is going to have trouble if you're trying to handle hi-def and you've only 5GB of storage space left.
STOP WHAT YOU'RE DOING and configure that external disc, and unload some of your 295GB files onto that to give your Mac at least 10% - i.e; 30GB - "breathing space"!
Then, with a properly-configured external FireWire disc, and 30GB space on your internal disc, try again. Oh, and you may find importing runs faster with a fast external card reader, and by starting up iMovie instead of iPhoto (..disable iPhoto's Preference marked under the 'General' tab "Connecting camera opens: "iPhoto" ..set it to "No application").