iMovie on my Mac Pro won't recognize the Zi8 either. It mounts a drive (icon) on the desktop. I use iMovie's *File | Import Movies..* menu item to browse to the folder containing the videos. Works like a charm from there. See my post above for the exact steps. With this camera, you don't DV import - Kodak uses Apple supported video format, so the import workflow is simplified.
MAC newby here. Trying to import movies from the Kodak Zi8 but get the message that the file can't be opened because an unknown error occurred. The number of the error is: -32766. Any ideas?