Using a Flip Video camera with iMovie '08

I have a new toy and at least for now I'm gonna have the bug to use it as often as I can. Julie got me a Flip Video Ultra for my birthday and I've been having fun with it since day one. Dare I say it, but this could be the year of video around here at Undisclosed Location. I'm going to have to get over how much I hate hearing my recorded voice, but I think that'll come with time.

There were a few hiccups to getting the Flip to play nice with iMovie '08 and the Mac in general. I freaked out at first try because all of the videos I had recorded played jerky and with garbled audio. This was even after installing the recommended 3ivx decoder that comes on the camera and updating the firmware after plugging the camera in for the first time. After doing a quick google search I came across a support thread suggestion to download and install Perian. Lo and behold, once I did this everything went smoothly. So if you're having problems with your Flip Video camera and your Mac, give the same thing a try.

Once I got video to show up correctly on my MacBook Pro running Leopard, the next step was getting everything to work with iMovie '08. I've read a few tips on how to get this done, but it seemed like this was going to be a multi-step process. So I simply fired up Automator and used the built in actions to create an application that would take care of the whole process for me. I added this application to my finder bar, and now when I plug in my Flip camera all I have to do is navigate to the "DCIM" folder and drag any videos I want to upload onto my "Flip Converter." Quicktime converts the videos from .avi to .m4v, saves them to my user "Movies" folder, and iMovie '08 Opens up and the import command is selected. You're then in control at this point, and can add your newly imported movie to a new even or an existing one.

You can try out this "app" yourself by downloading it here. And if you're aware of something better please let me know, because anything to make this easier will get me uploading more videos.

Honeymoon Bug Bite from Izzy on Vimeo.

Comments

[Patsy Lanclos]

I've had a Flip for several weeks, just drag the avi. video clips to QuickTime Pro, and export them as whatever file I need. Works great quick, easy. I had no trouble with the video but did already have Perian installed. So thanks for the tip - can pass it on to others who have trouble.

[Topher]

That's a great tip. I heard good things about this camera. This Automator app makes life easy. Thanks!

[Claude]

Thanks for all these explanations. They saved me days of worry, wondering if I hadn't bought something useless.

[Ian Alexander]

Anyone have issues with the files not getting deleted off the camera?

[Izzy]

Can't say that I've had that issue Ian, files have been deleting just fine from the camera for me.