How do you compress DV files captured from a DVCam to iMOVIE on a Mac, to files suitable for editing on Sony Vegas on PC?

Vegas can read the DV files, but they are freakin' massive it takes 10 hours just to load, and editing is impossible.

I need a manageable way to batch convert and compress these files so that I can begin editing in Vegas. There is over 100 clips. I don't want them all merged into one big clip; I just want them converted.

iMOVIE can compress them, but merges them into one file. This is useless as it makes finding the right clip a nightmare

I'm assuming here that these are Quicktime files encoded with a DV codec. I reckon that if you droped a clip on the Vegas timeline, then export to DV AVI, it would transcode pretty quick. Then import this back into Vegas.#

Alternatively, TMPGenc Xpress support quicktime and batch conversion.

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Thanks for that, Mark. Yes, I think they use a quicktime DV codec.

By "export" do you mean "render as" ? I tried this, and the resulting file is 7% larger than the original, so I'm guessing will result in even more work for vegas. Is this not the case?

I cannot drag 400 files into vegas separately and render them all, so will look into this TMPGenc you mention. It's a shame sony don't have a batch converter- how does everyone else batch convert their files for editing in vegas? I assume this must be a common problem.

Update:

I have just tried TMPGenc as you suggested, but it does not recognise the quicktime DV format. It gives the error message "could not open the video part of the file clip24.dv".