Like most new iPhone 3GS owners, I’ve been occasionally playing with the video recording feature. Although I have a couple YouTube accounts, up to now I’ve never used them much (I imagine that may change as I get the hang of video taking a bit more with the 3GS) – and for now I much prefer getting videos over to my Mac and sharing from there if I decide I want to. This also lets you view your videos at full quality, rather than compressed / monkeyed with for YouTube.
So I was very happy to spot a superb tip for importing videos quickly from the iPhone 3GS to a Mac over at iPhone Alley recently – and thought I’d share it here.
How To Quickly Import iPhone 3GS videos onto a Mac:
Connect your iPhone to your Mac with its USB (sync) cable
Launch the Image Capture app on your Mac
The Image Capture app should almost instantly see the iPhone attached, and offer up a dialog like the one in the screencap below. From there you can choose where to download videos or pictures to, whether to download all or make individual selections, and review and modify several other options (e.g whether or not to delete the originals on the iPhone once the import is done).
Once you’ve made you choices and clicked to download, it shows you a status bar and quickly transfers your videos over to the Mac. Or you can just click to select a video and drag it straight into your desired target folder for it. I have tested so far with only 30 – 60 second videos, but these zoomed across to the Mac quite nicely.
That’s it – your video files will be available as .mov files wherever you chose to save them too.
** Please note you can also import 3GS videos via the iPhoto app, if you are a fan of watching paint dry that is. I loathe iPhoto – it strikes me as one of the slowest and least responsive and generally overrated and crappy applications of any kind that I’ve used on any platform – so my preference is to almost never use it.
There may also be an app that does wireless transfer of files back and forth from iPhone to Mac or Windows machines that will work for this purpose, but I haven’t spotted one yet.
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{ 74 comments… read them below or add one }
wow, sorry to hear about iPhoto. reading your article i'm thinking.. doesnt he know about iPhoto? On my macbook pro with thousands of images and (flip videos) the app flies. No lag, no hesitation. Just so others know it's not a universal problem your having. I do have the latest version of iPhoto.
John
I love iphoto!
What I'm waiting for is Facebook to allow video uploads from the iPhone app. What I have to do is upload to YouTube, then just post a link to it on my Facebook.. Which can't be done unless I'm at the computer. That defeats the purpose of being able to shoot wirelessly. I'm almost positive it's coming though
There's an app in the app store called VideoUp which allows you to upload videos directly to your facebook account. I recommend it as it's the easiest way to upload videos to facebook
All you have to do is e-mail the video to your Facebook mobile e-mail that Facebook offers you. Look it up. The video posts directly to your wall.
John and Joshua – glad you've had better experiences than me. iPhoto has always been a dog on my MacBook – takes forever and a day to launch and even once I think it has fully launched, it often hangs as soon as I attempt a click anywhere. It may be just me, but I gave it a year's worth of chances and it never performed anywhere close to well.
Bobby – I would bet that will come along fairly soon too.
forgot all about image capture app. thx for the tip. making videos is so darn easy with the 3GS.
My pleasure on the small tip. Agree it is very easy – did a couple short ones while out walking the canine today.
I agree with other posters. I have more than 14K photos and videos, organized in about 100 albums. iPhoto takes a couple of seconds to launch and doesn't lag when working with photos or albums. I also have the latest version. Since iPhoto '06, I have never faced the troubles you describe. But never tried it on a Mac Book.
jacoch – so which type of Mac do you use iPhoto on? I don't think the MacBook should be an issue – it is only just over a year old, has 4GB of RAM and runs most apps fantastically well. I regularly work with 8 spaces open, Firefox running with up to a dozen tabs open, a VMWare virtual machine running etc – and happily switch back and forth among many running apps and get great performance in all of them. iPhoto, as I've said, has always been horrendously slow to launch, and enormously fond of becoming unresponsive and requiring a force quit way too often.
Thanks for the tip. Can't believe i didn't think about using image capture.
You're welcome – and glad if it helped.
I'm glad I found this thread, I haven't been able to copy my video's over to my iBook with iPhoto. It only recognizes the photos, not the videos. I'm wondering if it's cause I have an older iBook, although I think I have the most recent version of iPhoto. I too had totally forgotten about Image Capture.
So glad to hear this tip helped – thanks for taking time to comment and let us know.
Help you did! After way to much wasted time with iphoto I just got the videos off my phone. Thanks
Excellent – glad to hear it.
Thanks man!!! After more thn an hour trying to transfer video from my new iPhone to my MacBook you solved the issue. Appreciate it!
Cool – very glad it helped you out.
AWESOME
wow – this is super easy – thanks for the tip.
I can't believe this basic info wasn't provided by Apple when the phone was launched.
My pleasure – and glad it helped.
Thanks man! very helpful
You're very welcome.
Thank you, after two months now I can transfer my videos to my mac. Thanks a lottt
Great stuff – glad to hear it.
Great tip! Been looking for this since I am new to iPhone…great to transfer videos fast and simple! Thanks alot mate!
No worries – glad it was useful.
No worries – my pleasure as always.
thanks for that !
You're welcome.
great tip
Thanks John!
THANK YOU VERY MUCH. Image capture is much better than iphoto in my opinion. Awesome the location feature that u can see in image capture.
You're very welcome. Glad it helped.
Breeeeeeliant!!! Thanks!
Pleasure. Nice spelling there
just the tip i needed! Good man!
Thanks alot! Image capture worked great on my G4 laptop running 10.4. iPhoto, does not work or will work on my system, apple forgets to tell you that you have to have iphoto 4.o or greater, iLike in this case and my system cant run that making it impossible to use iphoto, itunes or ilike. Thanks apple, no I’m not buying a new computer I’ll use image capture instead. thanks Patrick and your right , iphoto runs a like a drunk dog crawling out of a saloon in Needles Nevada at high noon.
You're very welcome. Glad it's been of help – and yeah I still avoid iPhoto whenever possible.
Very good tip mate, helped me out a lot, feel a bit stupid for not trying that in the first place!!!
Cheers!
Cool – very glad to hear it helped.
thanks so much bro!!!
My pleasure.
THANK YOU SOOOOO MUCH!!! IVE BEEN LOOKING FOR A WAY TO TRANSFER VIDEOS AND PICTURES FROM MY IPHONE TO MY MAC FOR HOURS!!!!!!!!!!!!!
i knew mac would make an easy way! but all i found online was programs to help transfer and none of them worked!! thanks so much!!
Very glad it was helpful for you.
Anybody knows an alternative for Windows 7?
The Scanners and Cameras applet possibly?
Thanks for this excellent tip!
My pleasure
Problem here. When I connect my iphone 3gs to my iMac G5 via the USB cable and launch Image Capture, it says that "No Image Capture device connected" and won't do anything from there. Does anyone know what the problem may be?
You could try swapping the USB port you connect to, or the USB cable you're using for starters.
Thx Patrick! That worked for me
Cool – glad to hear it.
i wanna thank you a million… I've used my Mac for almost plus and can you believe I have NEVER knew there is an Image Caption Apps. LOL…. It's time to adventure with my MAC… Thanks again!!!
No worries – very glad to hear it helped, you're welcome a million
A million thanks!
that was really helpful! thanks
leo
When I connect my iphone 3gs to my iMac G5 via the USB cable and launch Image Capture, it says that “No Image Capture device connected” and won't do anything from there. I saw a post where someone just changed their USB port. That doesn't work for me and I've tried everything. Need to edit some videos asap and my workload is getting bigger by the day! SOS
Does iTunes recognize the iPhone on that machine? I'm guessing not. Try another sync cable might be one next step. Or with a dock if you have one. Or on another PC and then transfer videos from one PC to the other.
Thank You!!!! After 5 "could not publish errors" (logged out and in to Youtube, checked that 3G was on, checked that wireless connection was on, made sure device would never sleep) I was about ready to pull out some hairs. And not just gray ones. Your suggestion worked beautifully.
Excellent – very glad to hear it helped you out.
when I connect using image capture, it doesn't give me an import video option…only an image or photo import option
You're connecting an iPhone 3GS? If so, do videos show up OK in iPhoto?
Am I the only one that this didn't work? I have a 3gs, and an imac w/ the latest iphoto and everything else all updated. When I launch Image Capture it doesn't recognize my phone being plugged in. Any tips to why? Or, how can I get it to recognize it? Damnnn so close!
Do any other apps recognize the iPhone being plugged in? Generally if one app sees it, all do. If none of them see it, then try a different USB port and a different sync cable.
Thank you so much for this post! I couldn't figure out how to downlaod videos b/c iPhoto won't let me, this is MUCH appreciated and so easy! Thanks!!
dude, thanks for the tip! I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to import video off my iphone. You rock!
Sincere thanks for this. Was going crazy trying to figure this out. For those that are getting device not found, make sure you've entered your password on your phone – that was my problem.
hi, just as an aside to this, you can just drag and drop the movie files directly into a folder without going thru the import route, as usual with my mac I assumed there would be a quicker way and yes, it works great…
btw, iphoto is a bitch for me as well, so slllllloooooowwwwwww…
This doesn't work on my 3gs / macbook pro. Download bar progress nicely, but no pictures or vids are transferred. Apple fix this, it royally sucks!
Nice
thanks
Thanks for this post! I had been searching for different methods and they all required purchasing a program. So, thanks for saving me like… $25.
) I appreciate it!
Pleasure.
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