How to convert miniDV from camcorder directly to an external drive so that I can later take parts to use in imovie

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How to convert miniDV from camcorder directly to an external drive so that I can later take parts to use in imovie

I have a panasonic PV-GS120 and I purchased the firewall and thunderbolt cords and iMovie recognizes the camera and I can import video. I have lots of video. I want to transfer the miniDV directly to an external hard drive. I have already been doing this with home DVD's that I burned 12 years ago - Importing the VOB from the DVD's to the external hard drive, and then converting the VOB's to mp4, making it importable to iMovie.

I do not want to take space on my computer - I want it directly on the external hard drive so that I can pull up one video at a time on iMovie, select segments that I want, and then delete the rest on iMovie while maintaining the entire file on the external hard drive.

Then I would like to merge these different projects in iMovie into one video.

MacBook Air, macOS High Sierra (10.13.6)

Posted on Nov 16, 2018 1:00 PM

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Answer 1

sterling r

Community Specialist

Nov 17, 2018 4:01 PM in response to mmyfromtwin

Good afternoon mmyfromtwin,

Welcome to the Apple Support Communities!

I understand you want to import your miniDV files directly to an external drive. You can do that with iMovie. Just create a library with at least one Event on the external drive (formatted for MacOS Extended Journaled). Open that library and begin the importing process.
iMovie for Mac: Import from tape-based cameras
Since you have a lot of tapes to import, and the importing is done in real time, you might also consider a service like iMemoriesto digitize all of your analog videos and put them on an external drive for you. That way, you can spend your time actually editing and creating with the media.
Take care.

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How to convert miniDV from camcorder directly to an external drive so that I can later take parts to use in imovie

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