i ca not get my canon vixia hf11 to show up in imovie. driving me nuts. Any suggestions. I have tried restarting, and downloading drivers, etc. Many thanks

You forgot to mention what version of iMovie you have, but check whether that camera is supported:

iMovie 11 - cameras supported:

http://help.apple.com/imovie/cameras/en/index.html?lang=en_US

iMovie 9 - cameras supported:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3290?viewlocale=en_US

iMovie 8 Camcorders supported:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1014

Digital camera RAW formats supported by OS X Lion:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4757?viewlocale=en_US

Digital camera RAW formats supported by OS X Snow Leopard:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3825?viewlocale=en_US

Your Canon vixia hf11 recorded video is AVCHD format. The videos are not being recognized sometimes by iMovie.

This issue may be due to missing image database files. If image database files are corrupted or deleted and then repaired on the camera, any videos recorded before the image database files were repaired will not be recognized by the iMovie software - even if the video files are still there.

Another possibility that may prevent some videos from being recognized by the iMovie software is if both standard definition (SD) and high definition (HD) videos have been recorded with the camera - the iMovie software may only recognize the SD videos. In this case, transfer the SD videos to the computer before attempting to transfer the HD videos.

In my opinion, you'd better transcode AVCHD to AIC MOV (iMovie's native format) before trasnferring to imovie.

Have a good time!

It's been 3 months so maybe this is solved, but ...

Conversion of AVCHD to MOV file (with or without recoding to Apple Intermediate Codec) may solve your problem. Best methods I know of involve spending a little money for a video converter.

"ClipWrap" (In AppStore) is $50 but best option for most of my needs.

- It can "unwrap" the AVCHD "MTS" files and output them to "MOV" files with absolutely no change to the video data. This is fast, almost like a copy.

- It can also convert the AVCHD to various Codecs including Apple Intermediate Codec, which is the native iMovie Codec. The conversion is slower, but these files can be copied directly into iMovie during import with no further conversion, so the import step is very fast.

- It PRESERVES the Date/Time info for the movie, which not all converters do. This is EXTREMELY helpful as iMovie sorts clips by the time/date stamp.

- It has a simple drag/drop/start interface which is easy to run, and it converts pretty quickly.

- It works with AVCHD 60 fps file input as well as 30 fps, and outputs at the same frame rate. (Some converters don't support the non-standard AVCHD 60 fps video produced by some cameras.)

Aunsoft has a product "Aunsoft Video Converter" (also in AppStore) which has more options for conversion and is only $35. Some limited products in their line sell for less (eg MTS converter for $29).

Pros:

- Many conversion options

- Can change frame rate of output, eg conversion of 60 fps to 30 fps to save file space when 60 fps is not needed.

Cons:

- Interface loads files first, which can take several minutes if you have 100 or more files, and THEN you can tell it to start the actual conversion.

- AVCHD Time/Date Stamp metadata info is lost for the converted file. This is a big negative for me, and is reason enough to use ClipWrap.

MPEG Streamclip - I think this is free now, and it does AVCHD conversion, but does not support AVCHD 60 fps (unless they added it recently) so I don't use it anymore. It's a powerful tool (you can view and select subclips before converting) so if you don't need the 60 fps, it may be worth a download.

Steve

iMac (core 2 duo)

Panasonic HDC-TM90