Hi everyone,
I recently (last week) bought a new MacBook and I've been pretty happy with it so far, but right now it's giving me hell on iMovie.
Just as a test when I first got the computer, I tried importing some video files from my digital camera. They were in AVI format and worked fine. I was able to edit them into a short movie and it looked like everything was going great.
Now a few days ago I was filming a short movie with my friends using a digital camcorder with an HDD-- sorry I don't have the specific model or anything, it's not mine and I don't have it with me. It saves its files as .MPG. I copied them over to the MacBook hard drive, but unfortunately, they would not play-- I click on them and get the message that "The file is not a movie file." Naturally iMovie refused to import them. The identical files, however, do play correctly on my Vista desktop. After some searching, i concluded that the files were in MPEG-2, and downloaded HandBrake to convert them.
Now here's where it gets weird. I tried converting the files to AVI, since that had worked with my digital camera. The files now would play the video I had recorded, but no audio! Frustrated, I tried adding them to my iMovie library, in an attempt to "import first and ask questions later." iMovie now would recognize them as importable files... I click on the file and hit "Import," and it gives me a status bar showing import progress, giving all the appearance of doing work... then when the import is complete, my event is still empty of video. I checked the Movies/iMovie Events folder and the AVI files have indeed been copied but they do not show up within iMovie.
I then tried to use HandBrake to convert the MPG's to MP4. This creates a .M4V file which I can play perfectly (video/audio) in QuickTime, but cannot import into iMovie!
I am very frustrated right now and would greatly appreciate any help. The only other video editing software I have is on my old Windows XP machine... the software is useful but the computer itself is old, and hell to use, and I'd much prefer to use my MacBook if possible.
I recently (last week) bought a new MacBook and I've been pretty happy with it so far, but right now it's giving me hell on iMovie.
Just as a test when I first got the computer, I tried importing some video files from my digital camera. They were in AVI format and worked fine. I was able to edit them into a short movie and it looked like everything was going great.
Now a few days ago I was filming a short movie with my friends using a digital camcorder with an HDD-- sorry I don't have the specific model or anything, it's not mine and I don't have it with me. It saves its files as .MPG. I copied them over to the MacBook hard drive, but unfortunately, they would not play-- I click on them and get the message that "The file is not a movie file." Naturally iMovie refused to import them. The identical files, however, do play correctly on my Vista desktop. After some searching, i concluded that the files were in MPEG-2, and downloaded HandBrake to convert them.
Now here's where it gets weird. I tried converting the files to AVI, since that had worked with my digital camera. The files now would play the video I had recorded, but no audio! Frustrated, I tried adding them to my iMovie library, in an attempt to "import first and ask questions later." iMovie now would recognize them as importable files... I click on the file and hit "Import," and it gives me a status bar showing import progress, giving all the appearance of doing work... then when the import is complete, my event is still empty of video. I checked the Movies/iMovie Events folder and the AVI files have indeed been copied but they do not show up within iMovie.
I then tried to use HandBrake to convert the MPG's to MP4. This creates a .M4V file which I can play perfectly (video/audio) in QuickTime, but cannot import into iMovie!
I am very frustrated right now and would greatly appreciate any help. The only other video editing software I have is on my old Windows XP machine... the software is useful but the computer itself is old, and hell to use, and I'd much prefer to use my MacBook if possible.
