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This article mainly focus on how to connect camera to iMovie on Mac OS X (10.8 Mountain Lion included), problems may occure and how to troubleshoot these problems.

Part One: How to connect camera to iMovie on Mac OS X (Mountain Lion included)?

Video Camera Recorder or simply camcorder is an electronic recording device that serves both as a video recorder and a video camera. These devices use optical disks, flash memory and hard disk drives as their storage media and play as major devices used for recording and storing audios and videos. You can connect them to your computer using a USB cable. Here is how you do it.

Step 1: Open iMovie on your Mac.

Step 2: Now we need to connect the camcorder to the computer. With the camcorder OFF and plugged into a wall outlet, connect a FireWire cable to your camera. The smaller end, called a 4-pin goes to the camera in the DV port. The larger end, called the 6-pin goes to the computer. The 6-pin end looks similar to a USB cable, but it is round, so do not try to plug it into your USB port.

Step 3: Turn on your camcorder in the playback mode or what is more commonly called the VCR mode. iMovie should detect the camcorder and open a window automatically which you can easily see all the clips on it. If you only want to import some of them, click Manual and check the ones you want to import checked to iMovie.

Tip: If this message does not appear, make sure all the connections from the camera to the computer are plugged in properly, and the camera is turned on to the VCR mode.

Step 4: Then iMovie will ask you to name the event. One last click Import button, and the video is on its way from camera into your iMovie.

Step 5: Start to edit your movie on iMovie.

Part Two: Why cannot connect camera to iMovie and how to fix it?

There must be times when you connect your DVD, Flash memory or HDD-based camcorder to iMovie '08, iMovie '09 or later, you observe any of the following symptoms:

• You attempt to export or import video from the device using iMovie and the application stops responding unexpectedly and fails to export or import the files.

• While normally trying to use the camera, iMovie reports that it cannot see any camera.

• iMovie is a Mac application that allows users to edit the videos.

Solutions to connect camera to iMovie (OS X 10.8 supported):

First, click iMovie supported camcorder to check if your camera is on the list, if so, please follow the steps below:

• One reason for such behavior could be that you are not using a qualified device that could completely support iMovie '09 and later. So, you need to replace the device.

• Try reestablishing the connection to the camera. Perform steps like turning the camera on and off, reconnecting the USB and camera, reopening iMovie, using a different USB cable and restarting the system.

• Check if the camera is recognized in Apple System Profiler. If it is not, reset the USB connection.

• If you are using an AVCHD DVD camcorder, replace it as iMovie doesn't work with it without an Intel processor. Or you can rip AVCHD DVD to video before importing to iMovie.

• Ensure that camera settings are correct for recording footage, which should be at 'high quality' and 'normal' settings.

In another instance, if your camcorder video cannot be recognized by iMovie, that means the video formats are unacceptable. In this case, you have to convert the video. For more information about this issue, please refer to how to make a home movie on Mac using iMovie.