.AVI movies in iMovie

[cheddar-caveman]

I have a night vision camera and it records .AVI movies but I can't get iMovie (9.0.9) on my MacBook Pro to recognise them. How can I "import" them to iMovie for editing? Do I need other software?

[Rod Sprague]

Here you go:
iMovie only reads AVI that both the audio and the video were compressed by using a codec that iMovie can recognize. If your AVI video files are not imported, it's because of the codec used to create the AVI file is not supported by iMovie, even if you have Perian installed, which only allows you to play AVI in QuickTime. If you want to edit AVI in iMovie, the easy option would be converting the AVI files to an iMovie compatible format, like MOV, MP4, or M4V.
To achieve this try using "Any Video Converter" available from the App Store for free then import into iVideo.
Cheers

[cheddar-caveman]

Cheers Rod, I'm off to the store!

Ok, back from the store but typical Apple, it'll cost money - unless you want a large red banner across the video!

[MightyGem]

MPEGStreamclip is what you need.
Squared 5 - MPEG Streamclip video converter for Mac OS X

[chas_m]

^^^ and it's free!

[Rod Sprague]

Cheers Rod, I'm off to the store!

Ok, back from the store but typical Apple, it'll cost money - unless you want a large red banner across the video!

Sorry cheddar-caveman when I downloaded it it was free.

[Monistee]

I turn it into an mp4. And it works for me! Hope it helps.

[chas_m]

An addendum to this thread -- Adapter (free) from Macroplant was updated to version 2.0 and works well. These days I use iFFmpeg ($10), MPEG Streamclip (free) or Permute ($10) depending on what I want to do.