Why is iMovie HD taking up so much HD space?

[katlove]

So I'm taking some old home movie clips that I have stored on my iMac in .mp4 format and importing in iMovie HD (6) ... I notice my HD space vanishing quickly -- for example, a 24 min. clip was about 1.4GB in its original form but when I imported into iMovie the same clip was 11GB ... what's the deal?

 

[bigbossbmb]

You can't edit MP4 natively, so iMovie transcodes the footage to AIC.

 

[katlove]

So should I go back and use my Canopus converter and transfer the footage directly into iMovie or is there away to convert these mp4 files?

 

[bigbossbmb]

If you can recapture the footage, do so in the DV codec and then setup the project to be DV in iMovie... DV files are 13gb/hour, but iMovie will not need to transcode them to AIC during the edit.

 

[katlove]

Good deal ... thanks for the help!