[Jorge Gomez]

I finally get what you’re trying to do and the current Macs don’t offer that feature via USB as far as I know. I don’t believe Final Cut offers that feature either.

sorry.

[Jorge Gomez]

Jennifer,

When you say you are transfering the video, are you using the iMovie import or are you copying the file from the camcorder drive?

When you copy the .mts files from the camcorder, they are not readable in any Apple application that I can find so far, which leads me to believe that you are importing (e.g. converting) the video from .mts format to .mov format.

You will lose some quality as the resolution drops down during the export process.

The only suggestion I can make is for you to use Sony Vegas 8 or alternatively pay for an Apple product like Final Cut Express 4 which supports AVCHD.

You can read about it here.
https://gizmodo.com/gadgets/apple/apple-rolls-out-final-cut-express-4-with-avchd-support-for-199-323042.php

[Jorge Gomez]

I just bought the same camera and there are various options you can pursue:

1. you can copy the video directly from the camcorder drive (warning: the manual strongly urges you not do this as it may “damage the camera/video”) but I do it anyway.

2. if you are using iMovie, you need to understand that iMovie 7 doesn’t natively support .mts files (Canon format) so it actually “plays” the video and converts it to .mov format during the import process.

So you’re dilemma will be: import the video very quickly by copying the files over from drive to drive but you’ll be left with unreadable .mts files or you can import it via USB via iMovie but it will take longer.

The compromise I came up with was to copy the video from drive to drive and use Sony Vegas to edit the video as it natively supports .mts file formats. I run Vegas in a windows Xp virtual machine and it is a bit slow even with 4 gb ram on my Mac.