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

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.

bpapa

Posted 2009-08-16T03:42:31.400

Reputation: 745

Answers

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.

Chealion

Posted 2009-08-16T03:42:31.400

Reputation: 22 932

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.

Harley Watson

Posted 2009-08-16T03:42:31.400

Reputation: 426

3Come on now, not doing #1. – bpapa – 2009-08-16T03:59:37.630

Sorry, I didn't know you didn't want to :/ – Harley Watson – 2009-08-16T16:45:16.557

Can't you brick your phone – Benny – 2011-01-02T08:35:56.230

I tend to not mention jail breaking unless it is the only way to accomplish a desired task from a question. – Troggy – 2009-08-16T19:35:29.203

It's the easiest and can be done via wireless. – Harley Watson – 2009-08-17T02:24:41.320

@Benny: If you don't mess with the baseband, jailbreaking won't brick. – Harley Watson – 2011-01-12T22:15:37.690

(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.

--
dp

Dipak Patel

Posted 2009-08-16T03:42:31.400

Reputation: 296