Mini DV to external drive to iMovie to DVD – strategy?

I have had 4 hours of old home movies transferred from Beta to mini dv tapes, and plan to transfer them to an external firewire drive using a borrowed camcorder, then use iMovie to edit and burn them onto a one hour DVD. Can I use the copy of iMovie HD 6 on my internal drive to process the dv material on the external drive, or should I install iMovie on the external drive - and will iLife let me do that? There is insufficient capacity on the internal drive to handle more than a few minutes of dv material.
Thanks for your help. It's my first crack at iMovie - any hints would be gratefully received!
iMac G4 Mac OS X (10.4.6)

hello there eagledavid1.
Welcome to the discussions.
You should have no problem doing that (although 4 hours will take a BUNCH of space). I have imovie on my internal drive and create the movies on the external drive.
All you do is open imovie6. A "create new project" window will open.
All you do is name the project. Then in the next field point it to your external hard drive.
One thing to remember is that DV format video can takes up a lot of disk space. About 3.6 MB/second or 13GB an hour.
One way to conserve disk space is to be selective about what you import to iMovie in the first place.
I recommend NOT to import wholes tapes, but do a selection WHILE import.
concerning disk size:
you need 10 - 15 GB free disk space on your internal drive, just to make iDVD work correctly... don't overcrowed your internal drive ...-
do some reading:
http://www.apple.com/ilife/tutorials/imovie/
best practise:
don't start with your "best" project, start with some "trash" project, 5min max, just to get used with all the functions & options...
good luck!!
Mac Mini & Windows XP Mac OS X (10.4.5) in the process of making the FULL switch from PC to MAC

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Mini DV to external drive to iMovie to DVD – strategy?

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