Panasonic HC-V201 camcorder and iMovie HD (6.0.4)

Hi,

I use iMovie HD (6.0.4) to edit video from my Panasonic HC-V201 camcorder. I hate iMovie 11 and it will not do what I need to do so let's get that out of the way. (I need to export clips.)

I had a Panasonic HC-V100 before this. It became defective so Panasonic replaced it with this upgrade a few weeks ago. I haven't recorded long recordings up til now.

A few more details on what I do to be able to edit: I use Movie Converter to convert (rewrap) the MTS files as Quicktime. That has worked for both camcorders. I then open up the package that iMovie has created for each project and put the movie files into the Media folder and close everything up, open the project and remove the files from the trash. All works fine. (I tried editing straight iFrame files using MPEG Steamclip but don't like the quality I end up with.)

What I'm seeing now are a few things I haven't seen with the earlier camcorder.

1) Most severe: The camcorder creates another file after one hour of recording. OK. That didn't cause any problems with the old camcorder. It seems though with this one that that additional file has the audio out of sync, the audio is ahead of the video. Panasonic wants me to check the files in the camera but it's too late for that. I've deleted them in the camera. I do have the MTS files still but I don't know of any way to play them on a Mac. (iMovie 11 will play them if they are still in the camera but it's too late for that.)

2) Perhaps related to #1, I'm seeing a few scattered green frames right before and after that one hour mark when I fast forward or reverse through that section using iMovie. If I play through that section I usually don't see any green frames but I haven't experimented enough. The audio remains out of sync regardless.

3) I am recording using the HA quality 1080i ((17Mbps / VBR), (1920 x 1080)). I tried using the 1080p setting ((28Mbps / VBR), (1920 x 1080)) but iMovie was having a hard time playing them as was Quicktime Player so I opted fo go down a step in quality. I used the HA setting with the old camcorder and didn't have any problems. (I export all movies at full quality and then use Quicktime Player to export them again as 1080p. This cuts down on file size considerably and so far, I haven't noticed quality decreasing.) Shouldn't IMovie HD be able to handle 1080p? I am using a MacBook Pro, quad core, 2 ghz, 8 gb RAM, 10.6.8. I thought progressive would be better than interlaced when viewing on a computer so I'm surprised that iMovie/my Mac is having such a hard time with progressive.

Thanks for any help on any of these questions. I'm most concerned about the audio ahead of video after one hour of recording problem but other aspects of this new camcorder being different from my older one interest me too.

Cheers,

John