Okay, one thing at a time..
"..You may be able to download its videos into iPhoto, as that now imports the videos which digital stills cameras can shoot.." ..If you have the latest iMovie, you should also have the latest version of a program called "iPhoto".
It's primarily a program for downloading, storing and editing photos. However, the latest version(s) will also download
movies (..automatically..) from digital
stills cameras: cameras which normally take photographs, but (..on many cameras..) also shoot video clips onto a little 'chip' or removable card inside the camera. (..Just as many movie cameras also shoot stills..)
If you connect your camera to your PowerBook via the USB cable, and switch the camera to Play mode, and then to Stop, and you then start the "iPhoto" program on your PowerBook, the program
may - I haven't tried it - see that the camcorder is connected, and
may look inside it for a folder which holds videos, and
may then offer to import the video into iPhoto.
If it does, and if you let the program import whatever it finds, it
may then create little 'thumbnail' pics inside iPhoto to represent these videos.
You could then select one, or more, of these clips, and click on 'File' and 'Export' in iPhoto, and export one or more of these to your 'Movies' folder, ready for editing with iMovie. (..I'd explain how to move these videos to the 'Movies' folder, or how to edit them from the 'Pictures' folder, where they may be sitting, but I won't bother with that just now. Let's just do one step at a time..)
If iPhoto doesn't recognise the camcorder, or the movie clips sitting in the camcorder, then Plan B:
"..with this new camera, i plug it in...and an icon appears on the desktop but no program opens...if i open the icon, there is a collection of folders (none of which make sense to me.." ..Good, so far..
I don't have this camera, so I don't know the names of the folders you see when you double-click on the icon to "open" it. But here's how to find out which items are - probably - your movies, and how to "drag'n'drop" them (..i.e; how to move them from the camcorder to your Apple..) very easily.
(a) Open each folder, and look for anything which ends in .AVI or .MPG or .MPEG ..those are the likely names of movie files. So anything called, for instance, "D0001397.MPG" or maybe "D0002738.AVI" is probably a movie. If you see a name like that, click once on it to highlight it, and then hold down the 'Apple' key (..just to the left of the Spacebar at the bottom of the keyboard on your Apple..) and jab the letter "i". That combination of keys will then "get Info" about that file.
A window should pop up showing details about that file, such as the "Kind" of file it is, and - more importantly - its "Size". If the Size is only small, something like, say, "12KB", then it's too tiny to be a movie. If the size is more like "300KB" or bigger, then it probably
IS a movie!
(..Likely sizes go up from, say, about 200KB or more, all the way to 999KB and then change to 1
MB or more, such as, say, 8.7MB. Sizes then go beyond 999MB to 1 or more
GB..)
If it ends in .MPG or .MPEG or .AVI and is a large size, then all the other files which have the same endings (..such as .MPG or .MPEG or .AVI..) will also be movies. You could then - with that file selected (highlighted) - just
drag it across to your 'Movies' folder (which should be showing on the left-hand side of the computer screen) by holding down the mouse button on your PowerBook and dragging your finger across the 'trackpad' area, then releasing your finger off the mouse button when the file's name is sitting on top of the word 'Movies'. That's "drag'n'drop". The file will then be copied from the camcorder, via the USB cable, into the Movies folder on your PowerBook!
You could then select all of the similarly-named items, such as .MPG or .MPEG or .AVI, by clicking on one of them, then holding down the 'Apple' key and clicking in turn on each of the others ..if they're separated by other-named files in between.. and that will select all of those files, one by one.
But if all the similarly-named files are all next to each other, you could just click on the first one, then hold down the
Shift key, and click on the last one. Then all the files between and including the first and last will
all be selected!
Then just "drag'n'drop", as before, and
all those chosen files will be copied at the same time!
..But maybe, before copying them
all, just try playing the first one which appears to be a movie file ..just to be sure. You can do this by holding down the "
ctrl" key (bottom-left) while you click on the file's name (..eg; "D0001397.MPG" or "D0002738.AVI"..) and when the window pops up saying "Help - Open - Open With - Get Info.." etc, slide your mouse down to "Open With" and then choose "QuickTime", and maybe the file will play its video. If it does - all's OK! ..Drag'n'drop them all, and they'll be playable, but will probably need further fiddling-around-with to make them play - with sound - in iMovie. To do that "fiddling-around" you'll probabaly need to "..download and
use this MPEG2 Works program to convert the Sony videos into an iMovie-compatible format!.."
And to download it, just click on those blue(?) words "use this MPEG2 Works program" above, and that'll take you to the web page from where the program can be downloaded.
I haven't written (b) because this reply is long enough for now. Maybe after I've had breakfast I'll write siggestions (b) and (c).
Meanwhile, other people may give their suggestions, which may be even better than these!..
P.S: Matti suggests an alternative to MPEG2 Works, called
MPEG Streamclip - click on that blue link - (..which I'd forgotten about..) in his nearby post in
this topic, here.
