What's the easiest way to get an iPhone 3GS movie into iMovie?

Question

It seems like the steps right now are:

Shoot movie
sync iPhone with Mac via iTunes
Open iPhoto
Import photos from iPhone into iPhoto
Open iMovie (or retart if it was already running)
On startup, iMovie detects videos in iPhoto and imports them.

Yikes. Is there an easier way? It's a bit odd that the videos are handled as photos, in the first place.

And no, I'm not jailbreaking my iPhone simply to save me a few of these steps.

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 16 '09 at 04:54

If you're finding the iPhoto portion a bit tedious you can try a program such as Clipstart which focuses completely on movies but you'll still have to import it into iMovie.

Unfortunately at present there is no seamless way to get the videos from the iPhone direct to iMovie without first stopping off in iPhoto.

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Aug 16 '09 at 03:51

0

Jailbreak your iPhone
Install OpenSSH
SSH in from your mac (With a program such as CyberDuck or Fetch)
Grab the video file
Import into iMovie

After 1 and 2 are done, 3, 4, and 5 should be very easy.

answered Aug 16 '09 at 03:51

unlobito

426
4
9

3

Come on now, not doing #1. – bpapa Aug 16 '09 at 03:59
Sorry, I didn't know you didn't want to :/ – unlobito Aug 16 '09 at 16:45
I tend to not mention jail breaking unless it is the only way to accomplish a desired task from a question. – Troggy Aug 16 '09 at 19:35
It's the easiest and can be done via wireless. – unlobito Aug 17 '09 at 02:24
Can't you brick your phone – Benny Jan 02 '11 at 08:35
@Benny: If you don't mess with the baseband, jailbreaking won't brick. – unlobito Jan 12 '11 at 22:15

Dipak Patel · Answer 3 · 2009-08-17T18:33:53.470

(OK so I just checked this at home)

Connect iPhone 3GS using iPod cable.
Launch Image Capture app.
Select movies/images to import.
Launch iMovie and use File > Import > Movies... and browse to folder where you saved the movies.

Okay so I admit this is just substituting iPhoto with Image Capture, but the latter app is much more lightweight I guess... but then again if you use iPhoto then all your imported iPhone movies become available in the 'media browser' for other apps in iLife/iWork.

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dp

What's the easiest way to get an iPhone 3GS movie into iMovie?

3 Answers3