i am wondering if it is possiable to take a small movie (like 2 min. long) made by a home video camera and get it into carrara 8 as a background that moves?

If you can get it as an .avi I don't see why not. (Dunno what other formats or codecs under .avi that may present issues. I suppose it also supports .mov for those on the Mac side.) Alternately, if you have software that can convert recorded video into a series of sequentially numbered frames. (Premiere or Vegas should do this, and Virtualdub also exports if you don't have the $$ options.) If you go the frames route, be sure to make your folder first because you'll have a bazillion image files.

Keep in mind that videos can make for some huge files and eat up a lot of RAM, so you may want to use a temp image before swapping out for the final.

Short answer = yes.

When selecting a background, choose "Map" and select a movie instead of still image. Your Computer will need to have the same CODEC as used by the video camera for this to work corrrectly.

There are some additional production tricks that can make this effort easier. Post back with any questions.

Mark