Digital Video format for iMovie and iMac in general

[drschwartz]

I recently purchased a video capture product for my pc to digitize all the analog videos from when my kids were younger. The capture works great but, when I move it to the Mac (10.6.2), I'm told that the files (avi etc) can't be played.

Is the problem more likely to be on the Mac side or the PC side? Any guidance re this process (product and format to use) would be greatly appreciated!

TIA,
David

 

[spinnerlys]

What video product to capture your home videos are you talking about?

Also know, that .avi is only a container for videos with different codecs like DV, or Divx/Xvid or a lot of other kinds.

You can play .avi files via VLC Player, or you can convert those .avi files via MPEG Streamclip (http://www.squared5.com) to any other format and codec that program supports.

To edit in iMovie it is best to have a Quick Time file (.mov) where the video is encoded with the DV codec, which is best suited for editing with the material you have got.

DV encoded video will take up 12GB/hour, so know that you may need lots of GB to store your video if you want to edit it.

If your device offers you MPEG-2 (mostly used for video DVDs) or MPEG-4 (H264, Divx/Xvid) encoding, be aware, that those codecs are not meant for editing just for delivering content and save lots and lots of GB.

What do you want to digitize anyway? VHS tapes or something else?

 

[drschwartz]

Digital Video format for iMovie and iMac in general

I've got numerous VHS and Hi-8 tapes to digitize.

 

[ayzee]

If you just want to play them on your mac then download the free application Perian, which allows the mac to recognize different video formats.

If you want to edit the video in your mac(iMovie) you will need to convert the videos first. You can use the free application handbrake