Create an iMovie PAL project without a PAL camera

Aug 22, '02 09:45:26AM

Contributed by: Vitalstatistix

When iMovie creates a new project, it defaults to NTSC unless you have a PAL camera connected. If you don't have a PAL camera (say you want to edit a DV Stream produced by an InterView device for example), but want to create a PAL project, there's no option in iMovie to do so. Of course, there is a way. Here's what to do:

  1. Create a new project and save it while it is empty. This should create a folder containing a file with the same name as that folder (i.e. the name of the project).

  2. Open the file inside the project folder whose name is the same as the project using a text editor (e.g. BBEdit Lite, vi, etc.). It will look something like this:
    iMovie Project File

    External Version: 2.0
    Version: 0.9

    VideoStandard: NTSC
    ProjectSelection: 0 -1 -1
    PlayHead: 0
    AudioTrackMute: 0 0 0
  3. Change the "NTSC" to "PAL" and save the file.
When iMovie is opened again, you will now have a PAL project.

Comments (2)


Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20020822094526328