Bring QuickTime-playable clips directly into iMovie

Oct 05, '06 07:30:05AM

Contributed by: gizmo8500

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.

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