Submit Hint Search The Forums LinksStatsPollsHeadlinesRSS
14,000 hints and counting!

Bring QuickTime-playable clips directly into iMovie Apps
When trying to use video clips in iMovie that have not been imported from a video camera directly into the program (such as divx or H.264 videos), I have found this to be very tedious. That's because even if you choose to create a project using the MPEG-4 format, it always wants to convert the video -- even if that video is already MPEG-4. Also I find it annoying that it duplicates the file on the hard drive. So here's how to kill two birds with one stone:

Create a new movie project. If you're wanting to edit widescreen clips from ripped DVDs, then choose the widescreen format, otherwise I just choose MPEG-4. Now close the project and go to the project file on your hard drive. Control-click and choose Show Package Contents from the pop-up menu. Navigate to the Media folder, and drop all your video clips in there.

From what I can tell, it will accept just about anything so long as you have the codecs that allow QuickTime to play it. Now open your project and it will tell you that there are items in the trash. Choose to view those items and then select all and drag them to the clips pane. Now you should be able to edit freely with those new clips without having to import them.
    •    
  • Currently 3.33 / 5
  You rated: 4 / 5 (6 votes cast)
 
[26,568 views]  

Bring QuickTime-playable clips directly into iMovie | 4 comments | Create New Account
Click here to return to the 'Bring QuickTime-playable clips directly into iMovie' hint
The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. This site is not responsible for what they say.
Bring QuickTime-playable clips directly into iMovie
Authored by: brycesutherland on Oct 05, '06 08:53:08AM

Useful tip. I did this last week with a couple of .m4v clips. While I could in fact edit the clips, I found I could not add transitions like fade in and fade out to them. iMovie 6.0.3 complained of some error, and I assumed it was because the clips had not been converted to .dv format.

Can anyone confirm (or refute) my tentative hypothesis?



[ Reply to This | # ]
Bring QuickTime-playable clips directly into iMovie
Authored by: jens klausen on Oct 05, '06 02:13:03PM

I experienced this error also with YouTube streams (Perian installed and renamed to something.flv). I can split the video but no transitions. From the FX only Quartz Composer FX are working.
I would agree that this results because of a non-DV format.



[ Reply to This | # ]
Bring QuickTime-playable clips directly into iMovie
Authored by: stephenhart on Oct 05, '06 10:04:59AM

Note that Flip4Mac embeds the windows media file in QuickTime. It does not convert the file, even when you save as a QuickTime movie. If you send the resulting mov to a user who does not have Flip4Mac installed, no audio will play.

A number of sound utilities will open these files and allow Save As, but I haven't tested the resulting file on a Mac without Flip4Mac.



[ Reply to This | # ]
Bring QuickTime-playable clips directly into iMovie
Authored by: Serhij on Mar 24, '09 04:44:41PM

This trick works with iMovie HD (6.0.3), It is not work with 08 - 09.



[ Reply to This | # ]