Help needed!

I am having difficulty maintaining quality when importing to a high spec Mac from a Sony Handycam HDR-TG3E.

I've been importing the footage to iMovie and then editing it in Final Cut Pro. However the footage appears to judder slightly on panning shots, and it is especially visible when the footage is slowed down. It almost appears as though it is missing/skipping/speeding up every other frame.

What could be causing this? (It is not camera shake) Could it be the method of importing? Or it has been suggested that Sony cameras and Mac's just aren't particularly compatible?

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

[A n d r e w]

It's not a compatibility issue: Macs and Sonys are a perfectly good match, generally speaking (and the TG3 is supported by recent versions of iMovie and Final Cut). The problem is to do with the AVCHD codec - the kind of video recorded by the TG3 and other tapeless camcorders of its ilk. The only "solution" is to pan very slowly or (less practically) not at all.

AVCHD is not alone in this: HDV (a tape format of high definition video) can yield similar problems, though there the problem is perhaps slightly less pronounced. If you do a search for "judder" in this forum you'll no doubt find a number of posts with similar complaints.

Andrew.