Mac Newbie Question - Using MPEG2 in iMovie or iDVD

[revdarth]

My new iMac is supposed to arrive tomorrow (full disclosure - I am an expert Windows user transitioning to Mac) and one of the things I regularly did on my Windows machine was transfer video from my TiVo Series2 to my PC, use directshow dump to convert the .tivo file to a standard MPEG2 file and then burn to DVD for archiving and later viewing. I know that I will still have to go through Bootcamp to transfer videos from the TiVo to the PC (because I don't want to pay $80 for Roxio Toast) and then I can convert them to mpeg under bootcamp XP.

My question is whether iMovie and iDVD will be able to import and use the MPEG2 video files to burn to a DVD. I have been doing some searching and it seems that iMovie 08 can play an MPEG2 but that iDVD cannot import them. In that case, I assume I will need to convert within iMovie to another format that iDVD can use, correct?

Is there an easier way that I am missing?

Thanks

 

[WinterMute]

iDVD needs a QuickTime format (commonly a .mov file), and is set up to accept the DV Stream files that iMovie outputs in native configuration.

iMovie will accept a lot of file types, but works well with digi-cam output which is DV Stream.

If you can convert the .tivo file (I've no idea what format that is) to .dv that would be the easiest, although .dv files are large. If you can convert to a file format iMovie is happier with (any of the codecs native to QT, Sorenson 3, H264 etc) then iMovie will output directly to iDVD.

iDVD then encodes the MPEG2 as part of the disc building process.

 

[MisterMe]

Read and be wise.

 

[theBB]

You don't need to use iMovie first unless you want to edit before burning a DVD. iDVD can burn MPEG4 files directly, actually it can burn any video file QuickTime can play. Thus, MPEG2 might work if you buy the MPEG2 component for QuickTime.