Quality issues importing Sony HD into iMovie 8

I have a Sony HD AVCHD camera which uses SD cards. The only method to import the footage is with iMovie 8.
The program advises to use the "large" quality setting, and the footage came out really nicely. The resolution was small, but the quality was fantastic.
However when I selected the "full size" import the quality went terrible Lots of horizontal lines appeared, plus lots of double images when there is lots of movement. The size is good, but quality terrible.
Does anyone have any advice on how to import in both good quality and full size?

Any ideas what might be the problem?
Not really, but I would have persued the matter further by checking the source files manually. If you open your iMovie HD project package, you will find a folder named "Media" inside. This folder contains your "imported" files, as well as, any rendered transitions, titles, and/or special effects currently in use in the project. Any or all of these files may be movied (if you plan to manually "trash" the project) or copied (if you wand to keep the iMovie HD project) to another area of your hard drive where they would be accessable for normal import by iMovie '08. Further, if you want to import the current "assembled" timeline from iMovie HD, you can do the same to the file you will find in the "Shared Movies > iDVD" folder in your project. If such files cannot be imported either, then I would lean towards your have some sort of "problem install" of the application, software conflict problem, or possible problem at the system level.

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Message was edited by: buzzlulu

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Thanks for the reply. At present I am already doing as you suggested - creating a disk image of each full Memory Stick and saving these for archival purposes.
I am still curious to learn more about how iMovie08 converts the AVCHD files as compared to FileMaker Express. If I want to transcode the files into a usable format ie H.264(MPEG4) than will iMovie output the same result (from a quality standpoint) as Final Cut Express? Furthermore if I want to watch these recordings in full quality I can easily attach the Sony TG1 to my HD TV via HDMI. If iMovie transcodes these original files to MPEG4 and these were played back on my TV (via a media player) would they be of the same quality as those played back by directly attaching the camera to the TV as mentioned above?
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Message was edited by: buzzlulu

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I am having problems seeing and therefore importing my videos from my sony Camcorder. Anyone know of any reason and what may be the solution

Have you ever imported successfully before?
I have had same problem in past, things that have helped:
Make sure camera is plugged into computer before you open iMovie, Some cameras need to be hooked up to power source to import. Make sure the camera is in play mode not record mode, then once camera is plugged into computer, try turning camera on and off, toggle between play and record, and see if it appears. try "import from camera" several times after each of these. AND it may take a few seconds to recognize the camera so be patient.
good luck
r

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If you don't get an answer here, you might want to post your question in the iMovie discussion here.

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