Hi,
Just joined the DVi community and I'm looking for some advice on how to get started on editing my 4 hrs worth of old home movies which have already been digitally transferred onto Mini DV tapes, and they look fantastic. I have a Sony DCR-PC330 mini DV Camcorder and an iMac with OS X imovie (which I haven't yet learned, I figure I'll learn as I go). My Mac has 400 mhz, 128 megs of ram (which I am going to upgrade to 512 megs if needed) and 4 gigs of available hard drive space (was thinking of getting a Firelight 40 gig external drive). I'm basically just looking for advice on whether or not the external drive and the RAM upgrade are necessary.

Thanks!
Patrick

Yes, upgrade both your ram and your hard drive.

10 minutes of footage takes 2 GB of disk space, so an external drive is really necessary. The latest version of iMovie is really easier to use than earlier versions, but it sounds like you have an older machine that probably has an older version of OS X and iMovie. There are lots of books out there, so do a search on Amazon and look for your version of iMovie.

Thanks so much for replying so quickly, this info is very helpful to me, I really appreciate it. I have version 3.0.3 iMovie. Is this the latest version? I just upgraded to OS X so I'm assuming I have the latest update.

Don't know if your iMac is Firewire capable. The LaCie external firewire hard drives work great and are a reasonable value. Have been using a 120Gb as my scratch disc with FCP for about a year and just bought a 500Gb.

iMovie is up to 4.0.1 and the nicest new feature compared to 3.x is the ability to cut clips in a normal fashion and drag the edges to change the size of the clips. You can always go check http://www.apple.com/ilife/imovie/edit.html to see the newer features and see if they are worth it to you.

<<<-- Originally posted by Patrick Venuti : Hi,
Just joined the DVi community and I'm looking for some advice on how to get started on editing my 4 hrs worth of old home movies which have already been digitally transferred onto Mini DV tapes, and they look fantastic. I have a Sony DCR-PC330 mini DV Camcorder and an iMac with OS X imovie (which I haven't yet learned, I figure I'll learn as I go). My Mac has 400 mhz, 128 megs of ram (which I am going to upgrade to 512 megs if needed) and 4 gigs of available hard drive space (was thinking of getting a Firelight 40 gig external drive). I'm basically just looking for advice on whether or not the external drive and the RAM upgrade are necessary.

Thanks!
Patrick -->>>

If you have a iMac DV G3/400 mhz--then 128 megs of RAM is fine if you are doing it under Mac OS 9. [It never hurts to get more--but I've edited tons of home movies with an iMac exactly likes yours and 128 megs under Mac OS 9 runs great--you may still need to tweak the amount of memory alloted to it)

You definitely need a bigger hard drive. Five minutes of footage is about a gigabyte. To do an hour movie project--you should have at the very least a 20gig drive.
Even when you get the bigger hard drive do you really want to dump all four hours of it onto your hard drive at once? You can be more selective in what you capture.

As for other hints---

Personally:

Do NOT upgrade past iMovie 2.0.3.

If you can find the original iMovie 2 discs--reinstall that--you'll be MUCH happier.

iMovie 2.03 is FAST and pretty much rock solid.

iMovie 3 is a piece of junk. Buggy and slow.

The latest version--4.01 is good--but only if you have a fairly fast Mac---a 400 mhz G3(like your iMac)--would make editing pretty frustrating but not impossible.

That's all I can think of at the moment...

but I envy you---discovering iMovie for the VERY first time is a joy!


EDIT: Ooops--didn't read that you already upgraded to 3.01...hmmm....

You might boot into 9 just for EDITING.....

i wish i had your reply sooner because I just purchased a memory upgrade to 512 RAM from 128....which i now see was a big mistake. But I don't get it, won't 512 be much faster than 128? Now I'm confused as heck. I also upgraded to OS X just for imovie, thinking I should certainly get the latest version....and now I see that was a wrong move as well. Damn.
Help.

<<<-- Originally posted by Patrick Venuti : i wish i had your reply sooner because I just purchased a memory upgrade to 512 RAM from 128....which i now see was a big mistake. But I don't get it, won't 512 be much faster than 128? Now I'm confused as heck. I also upgraded to OS X just for imovie, thinking I should certainly get the latest version....and now I see that was a wrong move as well. Damn.
Help. -->>>


No, no, no! It is NOT a mistake---buying more memory is always a good move.

I was saying that if you using iMovie 2 in Mac OS 9---128megs would have been fine.

I'm just talking from my personal experience as I used to have a Ruby Red iMac DV 400 like yours.

The thing about upgrading that iMac DV 400 is that you have to figure out the total cost of what you are spending--some memory there, the iLife packeage and a bigger hard drive could go towards a eMac(which you can find refurbed for $549) which can run the latest version of iMovie fairly quickly(without the spinning beachball of death)

In my humble opinion--the iMac DV is a terrific editing machine running iMovie 2.

Thanks for clarifying that....and the line about the "spinning beach ball of death" is hysterical...! I have not had even 2 minutes to learn the iMovie program so I will be learing as I go along....By the way, do you know if it's possible to add music to my edited iMovies from "store bought" CD's?

adding music to an edit is possible
see the import program
enjoy

Thanks, I only asked because I thought there might be some odd coding or something that would prevent copyright infringement.