Can I use iMovie for a school project?

[WillMak]

Hey guys, I have to analyze movies for a psychology class and present them in class. The windows users in the class so far have been cutting the clips they need from the movies and combining them into a single file. I know I can do the same with iMovie for .mov files but the movie files I have are all avi. Will iMovie work seamlessly with cutting and pasting movie clips that are avi or divx?

 

[Cromulent]

I'm not sure if iMovie supports those file formats straight out of the box as it were, but I am sure that there are converters available that will convert them to Quicktime format so that you can edit it in iMovie.

 

[7on]

really though, .avi and .mov are all the same. You can even rename avis and movs and it won't make a bit of difference. Now what will make the difference is the codecs you have. You can usually google the codec name and find a mac quicktime codec pretty easily. The only modern codec you might be worried about is WMV3 (Windows Media Player 8-10) and to edit those you need the commercial Flip4Mac codec.

 

[WillMak]

really though, .avi and .mov are all the same. You can even rename avis and movs and it won't make a bit of difference. Now what will make the difference is the codecs you have. You can usually google the codec name and find a mac quicktime codec pretty easily. The only modern codec you might be worried about is WMV3 (Windows Media Player 8-10) and to edit those you need the commercial Flip4Mac codec.

Thanks! I downloaded a "divx codec" for quicktime as you suggested and now my avi's will run in quicktime! So this means I will be able to cut and paste them in iMovie? I guess the last question I have is what format can be plugged into keynote or powerpoint presentations?

 

[WillMak]

HOLY MOLY it's GOING SO SLOW to import a 700 mb .AVI file...is this normal!?

 

[WillMak]

I tried converting my avi to mov and the screen came out white but with audio. googling around, I found that I need to install the codec here: http://homepage.mac.com/hmason/mac-ms-mpeg4v1/ which is a .sit file. How do I install this?

 

[mikes63737]

.sit is the extension for a Stuffit compressed file. You can download stuffit expander here. You need to open it with stuffit expander and then you should be able to install it.

 

[R.R.Mac]

It should work i have an iBook G4 and it works perfectally with .avi and divx. It is a bit slow (very slow indeed ) but it is worth it and its great. my main problem is that i cant burn the dvd's without moving computer!