IMovie 11 no longer recognizes my camera

Hi -- I have a SONY HDR-CX580 AVCHD camcorder from which I have been happily transferring my videos into my iMovie 11 (version 9.0.8)  on my MacBook Pro.  A few times it wouldn't work but I've always been able to make it work by trying a few times. 
Today for some reason that stopped -- iMovie is no longer recognizing or connecting to my camcorder, all I can see is the Facetime HD built in camera.  I've read other forums and tried restarting the computer and connecting the USB cable from the camera to my MacBook Pro in various orders but to no avail.
I've also followed the instructions to trash the plist files here: https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-4061. iMovie is still not recognizing my camera. I'm a little out of ideas at this point.
I can connect to the camera with iPhoto and download photos no problem.
Anyone else have this issue and how did you solve it?  Apple tech support people please help!
Birgitte

Jim,
Thanks so much for your answer.  I'm trying to avoid that since importing directly makes the video files unpalatable to iMovie... not sure what/how to convert them so I can actually import them into iMovie and work with them.  However I discovered that it's the physical card in my camera that's causing iMovie not to recognize the camera -- I tried another card in the same camera and iMovie immediately connected to the camera.
So I guess I will have to import the videos from the card and reformat it.  Anyone who's had to do this before I would be grateful for tips on how to transfer from card to computer and then what to convert the videos to so iMovie recognizes the format.
Thanks again in advance...

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