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Converting m4v to mp4 for import to iMovie

I

icarrington

macrumors newbie
Original poster
May 14, 2011
3
0
Hi, I'm new to MacRumors, so I'm not sure how everything works.
I've been looking all day on how to import m4v into iMovie, for some free converter or something (without a watermark). Then I thought of just changing the file extension name from .m4v to .mp4 and it worked! I'm now importing the movie into iMovie.
I don't know if this is well known or not, but I've been looking all day and didn't find anything, so I hope I'm helping people out there.
Thanks.
 
And does iMovie then transcode (convert) the video into .mov files using the Apple Intermediate Codec (AIC)? You can check via looking at the imported files in Finder.
Anyway, MPEG Streamclip is a goo transcoding program.
 
lol, I have no idea what you just said, but before I renamed the file extension, movie maker wouldn't let me open it and now it will. Took ages as the file was over 1GB in size, but it let me open it :)
 
icarrington said:
lol, I have no idea what you just said, but before I renamed the file extension, movie maker wouldn't let me open it and now it will. Took ages as the file was over 1GB in size, but it let me open it :)
Click to expand...

.m4v and .mp4 files use MPEG-4 as codec to store the video part. MPEG-4 is NOT an editing codec.
The long time it took iMovie (Movie Maker is the Windows counterpart) to import the footage is due to it being transcoded to an editing format.

I don't have a definitive guide for you to link to to explain all the technobabble involved in editing and codecs and formats, maybe if you are interested you can find them yourself.

Anyway, it works for you as it seems.
 
simsaladimbamba said:
.m4v and .mp4 files use MPEG-4 as codec to store the video part. MPEG-4 is NOT an editing codec.
The long time it took iMovie (Movie Maker is the Windows counterpart) to import the footage is due to it being transcoded to an editing format.

I don't have a definitive guide for you to link to to explain all the technobabble involved in editing and codecs and formats, maybe if you are interested you can find them yourself.

Anyway, it works for you as it seems.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I thought just changing it would work for everyone.
Thanks for explaining it all :)
 
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