If you’ve got a new flash memory camcorder then you’re probably wanting to edit some video.  To do that you need to get the video from your camcorder into your computer.  There are couple ways to do this – you can use a USB or Firewire cable and use the software that came with your computer.  Or you can take the SDHC flash memory card out of your camera and put it in a card reader and transfer the video over.

There are advantages to using the software that came with your camera, you know that it will work, and more than likely it will do it automatically.  Many of the Flip type video cameras will even automatically upload your video to YouTube or other video sharing sites.  If you don’t have the software for your camera or it doesn’t work with your computer then you can usually get the video from your flash camcorder as though it were a flash drive.

If you have a Macintosh computer there are some formats that aren’t completely compatible with your computer.  Many of the video cameras don’t come with Mac software either.  If you are having a problem with your Mac not recognizing your movie files then you can use a simple free program called ffMpegX to convert them.  It’s very simple: drag the files onto your computer and select the .mov conversion option.  They will then be converted to Quicktime movie files and you can drag them into iMovie.

If you have a card reader then you can take the flash memory from your camcorder put it in the reader.  Drag the files you want onto your computer and convert them if necessary.  I find this easier to do then using the cables, since I don’t use the software that came with the camera.

Those are your basic options to get your video into your camera, you might like to use the software that came with the camera but it isn’t always the most powerful, although it might be easiest for transferring video.