Greetings.

I departed from the PC world in March - I now own a MacBook Pro. I also bought a Sony DCR-SR82 HDD Camcorder to film my concerts (I am a conductor) for personal growth as well as my new baby! My reasons for getting it were mainly the convenience of not having tapes. It has a 60GB HD and I have a WD External 500 with usb2, fw4 and fw8 to store files.

Come to find out (because I didn't come here first) that Sony's proprietary MP2 format (and accompanying software) isn't MAC compatible. I want to edit with iMovie and create DVDs for me and family. I bought a program called MPEG Streamclip which has a setting to convert MP2 to MP4 and I have run my files through this program so they can be seen AND HEARD in iMovie for editing.

I realize now how little I know and how much more I should have researched things.

Two questions:

1. Any hope that Sony and Apple will get their act together to make their products compatible and...
2. Am I losing lots of quality doing what I am proposing here?

One other question while I am on the topic. I borrowed a Mini DVD camcorder - also Sony - and I have a bunch of concert and baby mini disks. Is there a way to capture and edit these in iMovie or am I limited to copying the finalized disks to full size DVD for family etc.

Thanks for this wonderful forum and thanks in advance for any assistance.

Ted (AAL333)