I think I have the solution.
First, copy the existing HDD folder to a backup drive or the mac itself for later use. Once you are comfortable that you have copied (and backed up the video) you should format the drive through the camera using the menu, format, HDD commands.
Now that the camera is reformatted and empty...take a few video clips. Then plug the camera into the USB port on the Mac and put it in the playback mode. Open iMovie. At this point it should recognize the camera and pull up the import menu. My videos imported without incident once I did this.
Per apple support, I likely had TOO many files for the computer to make sense of so by reformatting the drive, it made it easily accesible to the mac.
Now, what to do with old files. I downloaded a program called mpeg streamclip and bought quicktime mpeg-2 viewer. This is a tedious option, but it works. Drag the clip you want to convert into the mpeg streamclip icon...it will open and you can preview it...if you like the clip go to file, save as, DV or AVI or Quicktime, or whatever you want...I save as DV. Give it a name.
Now open imovie and go to file, import movies, choose large, find the file that you just save as DV file and click import. This will create a new event for you. I use the date as my file name because when you convert the file you lose the date that it was taken.
Very time consuming, but worth it.
Luckily, I only have to do this for the first 20 GB.
I hope this helps.
