iMovie question - new mac user

[bakechad]

Hello,

I’m new to the Mac world (other than one day in college in the mac lab – circa 1992). After a great deal of research, I plan on purchasing a new iMac on 1/26/2008.

I went to the Apple store in downtown Chicago today with a bunch of questions. They were very helpful, but the answer to one question kind of threw me.

I told the rep that I just had a bunch of home movies converted from Hi-8 to DVD and wanted to do some editing in iMovie. He told me that I could not directly import the DVDs to iMovie and that I would need a third party application such as Final Cut Pro ($1300!).

Is this correct? I saw Popcorn on the shelf and it looked like it would do it.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Chad

 

[ergdegdeg]

I think this should do what you want: http://handbrake.fr/

 

[r.j.s]

For import into iMovie, MPEGStreamclip would be better and possibly faster. Google it.