why does a 20minute HD clip take 80 minutes to get into iMovie?

i just drag and drop the mp4 clip into it. i have a macbook pro and imovie 6.

Well HD files are significantly bigger than standard definition clips. The fastest I've ever seen it transfered is a 2.5:1 ratio (2.5 minutes of transfer time for every 1 minute of footage). So the 80 minutes for your HD clip is pretty normal, especially if you're using a USB 2.0 to connect the camcorder. If you want faster times try using a firewire, or IEEE-94, connection. Hope this helps, if you have any other questions feel free to ask.

Aditya is correct here. Except I don't believe that iMovie 06 can capture using USB. only firewire. Which is better. Consider a water tap. You turn it on to a steady, moderate trickle. That's Standard definition. Your turn on that water tap full on to where the water is gushing out the tap. That's HD. So the larger the pipeline you have, the faster the computer can capture the footage. Firewire will do that for you.

iMovie 08 with Leopard gives you the USB capture capabiity.

Also, the amount of RAM you have and the speed of your hard drive, motherboard bus speed, Chip speed, etc. also affects the time it takes to capture. It's the "chain is only as strong (fast) as it's weakest link" syndrome.