With your camera attached to the computer via a Firewire cable, you need to set the blue Mode Switch on the left just below the Monitor section of the screen to connect iMovie to your video camera.

Click on the tiny camera icon on the left to set the switch to the DV mode and connect to the camera.

The other mode to the right is for editing clips (the scissors icon).

Now you can control your camera by clicking on the five buttons at the bottom of the Monitor screen.

These buttons will change depending on whether you are viewing video that is still in the camera (when the Mode Switch is set to DV - the camera icon), or video from the Shelf or Viewer (when the Mode Switch is set to Edit - the scissors icon).

The main buttons in DV Mode for importing video from the camera are, from left to right:

• Rewind - The button at the far left that you click on to rewind the tape in your camera.
• Stop - The button second from the left that you click on to stop play/rewind/fast forward of the video at any point.
• Play - The larger button in the middle that you click on to begin playing the video at whatever point you've set with the Rewind and Fast Forward buttons. This button also is a toggle switch - to stop playing the video, just click again on the Play button.
• Pause - The button to the right of the Play button that you click on to pause the video from playing at any point. When paused, you'll still be able to see the frame of the video clip at the point you paused displayed in the Monitor screen.
• Fast Forward - The button at the far right that you click on to rapidly move forward through the video in your camera.
• Import - the large button just above the Play button that you use to import your video, which we'll get to in the next step.

The main buttons in Edit Mode are, from left to right:

• Rewind - The button at the far left rewinds to the beginning of your movie.
• Play - The larger button in the middle you click to begin playing your video. This button also is a toggle switch - to stop playing the video, just click again on the Play button.
• Full Screen - The button just to the right of the large Play button will display the video as a full screen on your computer. Press the escape key to return to the regular Monitor area display.

Shortcut for Playing in Edit Mode - rather than clicking on the Play button, you can simply press the spacebar on your keyboard to play the video, and press the spacebar again to stop the video.

In Edit Mode you also can move to a particular point in your video by clicking on the blue scrubber bar that is at the bottom of the Monitor screen and just above the control buttons.

When you click on a clip, it will be displayed in the Monitor screen, and a playhead, a tiny gray triangle, will appear on the scrubber bar just below the Monitor. You then can click and drag the triangular playhead to the right or the left to move the clip forward or rewind it.

Experiment at this point with the control buttons and the playhead/scrubber bar, moving back and forth between the video clips on your tape until you get the hang of using the control buttons, the spacebar and the playhead to start and stop playing of the clips.