Non supported camera and old Imovie version question?

I have a multi part question. First, I have an Ion Video camera that appears to not be supported by IMovie. But I also have an old version of IMovie 8.0.6 because I've never used it up until now. When I upload my video's, Iphoto automatically opens and they go into there. I want to be able to use IMovie to edit, add music etc. I've never really manually imported or exported things on my computer and don't know if that is how I can get them over into IMovie or what. I've tried muddling through trying to do that, and apparently I'm doing something wrong. When I hook up my Ion camera directly to my computer the videos won't go directly into IMovie for some reason. I've tried dragging the videos from iPhoto into IMovie and that won't work either. Can someone tell me detailed instructions on how to exactly do this or what I need to do to get videos into IMovie. What if my video camera isn't supported?? I need to learn how to do this fairly quickly. Thank you