To cut a long story short, I ended up purchasing my Panasonic AG-HMC152 yesterday, back home in Bangkok instead of back home in UK. I am required to join a production team and go on a shoot tomorrow.

I've figured out the basics of how to use the camera, the only thing that can go wrong is losing the data from the SD memory card and tonight I have tried installing my test footage into my MacBook Pro. I opened i-movie HD in the correct widescreen HD 1080i format but could not find/import the clips. Lots of files, mostly ones that 'Quicktime couldn't parse' whatever that means - and a still from my first shot which I was able to drag into i-movie but it was just a still.

It's probably quite important I figure this out now before my memory cards are full of valuable footage.

So to anybody who uses a Mac and a memory card camera - please help if you can.




A less important secondry question I also have is regarding ferrite cores which came with the camera package, though oddly enough a usb cable didn't but I found one in a box of electrical junk that had one ferrite core built in at the camera end. I attached the lose ferrite core at the usb end using mini cable ties.

Cameron, you might want to ask this question in the camera thread section under Panasonic cameras and the format of your camera. I am sure there are owners there that will have a quick answer for you.

If you need to, transfer the files to your computer and worry about whether any given program can 'parse' the files later. Data is still data, on a memory card or a HDD. And you'll have time to follow D. J. Ammmon's advice and find out what particular issues your Panasonic camera will give you on the Panasonic camera forum.

One of the problems with 'free' software like iMovie is that it may not be as flexible with the wide variety of file formats as some other editing software. And even the 'bigger' programs have problems keeping up with all the new video compression formats out there.

Yes. That's what I do with my 5D. Just copy the files onto your MacBook as data. Make sure that you have enough room available on the hard drive.
I then copy mine onto a La Cie rugged hard drive, from the MacBook, to be absolutely sure.
If you have time it's worth opening up and playing the files once they are copied onto the hard drive, to make sure they are OK. You only need to start them playing. You don't need to play them for long. Just start them.
You may need to download a player so that you can play the files on your Mac. I can't remember offhand which one I use. Either VLC player (most likely) or Flip4Mac (so that it will run in Quicktime).
http://www.videolan.org/vlc/
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows/products/windows-media-player/wmcomponents
If you can I would also take enough memory cards that you don't have to delete and re-use on the shoot. I lost some footage a few weeks back because I had to overwrite a memory card - I think that I could have retrieved the data if I still had it on the card.
Of course, if it is non-stop shooting backing up like this will be difficult to do unless you have an assistant. Depends what kind of shoot it is.
One final thought. I am assuming that you are using a card reader rather than some kind of cable from the camera, right? Just take the card out of the camera and put in the reader, connected to the MacBook. Then you are free to continue using the camera with a new card while the files are transferring.
Good luck and have fun.