Canon Vixia hv40 - won't import?

HDV only works with Firewire. You can either return your MacBook and get a MacBook Pro. Or you can return your camera and get a camera that works with SDHC cards or a hard drive. These work with USB.

Hi -
This is probably not what you want to hear, but tape based cameras must use firewire to import the video from the tape.
Here is the link to the Apple iMovie '09 Camera Support list:

https://support.apple.com/kb/HT3290

If you can have the camera record to a memory card, and not the tape, then you might be able to use USB to ingest those files.

Also, if you can get access to a computer that has firewire ports, you could use that computer to load the footage to an external disk drive. Then move the drive to your computer and import the files to edit.

Hope this helps.

I do not think it will work.
The way DV video is sent from the camera to the computer is structurally different than the way USB works.
DV video is sent as a constant stream, USB is sent as packets. Also, when you plug in a USB camera, it tells the computer what it is, so that iMovie will know to look there for the files. This would not occur with the adaptor.
Hope this helps.

I don't think it is a question of PC vs Mac, it is a question of the computer having a firewire port or not. There are some models of Macs and PCs that have them, and some that do not.
As I posted earlier, video from tape is delivered to the computer via firewire in a different way than data coming from an external drive or memory card device is delivered via USB.
So the options are either getting access to a computer with firewire, or, if you want to use the Mac Book you have, get a camera that is disc or memory card based, and then you would be able to access the video via USB.

Hope this helps.

The reason is that tape must be captured in real time. It is a sequential device that runs at a certain speed. The Firewire bus can be dedicated to make sure the tape is captured. A USB bus can be interrupted by the mouse, keyboard, disk drives, printers, etc. This would lead to drop-outs where some of your footage is not captured.

The usb bus is fine for random access devices like disk drives or SDHC cards, because the bus is not the bottleneck.