iMovie help please

I have had a copy made of an 8m/m colour film of my wedding in 1963 and put on DVD. I want to edit this DVD in iMovie, but try as I may, I cannot import it. I have tried File/Import/Movies which comes nack saying there are no files to import, I have also tried File/Import/iMovie HD Project/Video_TS, again to no effect. The DVD plays on my TV via a Panasonic DVD player and strangely it will also play on my MacPro laptop!
As I am a newcomer to this I would really appreciate help from anyone out there who knows more about how this software works.

The video files on the DVD are in a format that iMovie doesn't understand. Before importing it into iMovie you need to convert it.

There are several pieces of software that can do this including Handbrake and MPEG Streamclip . I've done this before with MPEG Streamclip. This article is a bit old but here's how I did it. I believe I converted the files to DV format at the time but any of the formats iMovie supports will work. I'm mostly using mp4 now.

Handbrake is probably the easiest and will give you an mp4 file that will import into iMovie.

Slydude said:

The video files on the DVD are in a format that iMovie doesn't understand. Before importing it into iMovie you need to convert it.

There are several pieces of software that can do this including Handbrake and MPEG Streamclip . I've done this before with MPEG Streamclip. This article is a bit old but here's how I did it. I believe I converted the files to DV format at the time but any of the formats iMovie supports will work. I'm mostly using mp4 now.

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Very many thanks for your most helpful suggestions, I went for the Streamclip one which has worked, although it was painfully slow. Anyway I am on my way now to getting the tidying up and titles I want to do to that old film.

With renewed thanks.

Malcolm Dewar

Thank you for your suggestion to use Handbrake, another Forum member came in first with Handbrake and Streamclip and I decided to try the latter. It has worked and I now have my film in iMovie, but it was terribly slow (took hours and hours!), so if I need to do anything similar, I will give Handbrake a try.

(took hours and hours!)

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Handbrake should process a 1 hour dvd in less than an hour.

Having married my wife who passed away last year in September, 1963 let me tell you something in confidence. The photos and movies star some young folk, definitely not me when I look in the mirror!

@MalD Glad that helped you out a bit. I started using MPEg Streamclip at a time when I found Handbrake's interface a bit daunting. It can be very slow at times but I continue to use it because it's good for situations where I only want part of a clip.

I also use Handbrake regularly and like MightyGem I find it very fast for some things though I've had some conversions take longer than it seemed they should. In reality though the time either program uses doesn't usually bother me too much. I either start it before going to work or before going to bed and let them do their thing.

harryb2448 said:

Having married my wife who passed away last year in September, 1963 let me tell you something in confidence. The photos and movies star some young folk, definitely not me when I look in the mirror!

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I know what's happening Harry. Someone in the makeup department is sneaking in at night prepping you for the current starring role. Unfortunately it requires you to look older than you are right?

It is the same with mirrors Sly. They don't make them like they used to!!

harryb2448 said:

It is the same with mirrors Sly. They don't make them like they used to!!

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That's a relief to know, as we were thinking of returning ours as they just don't work like they used to, and no upgrades, updates or firmware is available to improve their performance. Bummer when even the old stuff doesn't work as well as it did.

Thanks for your additional comment about Handbrake, I will definitely give it a try out next time I want to use a DVD as source material.

Why not give it a try with the dvd that you used with MPEGStreamclip? Then you'd have a proper comparison between the two.