iMovie supports multiple video formats and allows you to create projects that are tailored to your specific video format. You can use the following formats in iMovie:
When you create a new project in iMovie, click the Video Format disclosure triangle (if it isn't open already) and choose the format for your footage at hand from the pop-up menu.
Make sure that you choose the correct format that matches your footage to avoid additional video clip transcoding. This ensures the highest quality import and may save disk space, depending on the format.
Note: If you attempt to import footage from a camera (other than iSight) that does not match the project format you selected, one of two things will happen:
iMovie also allows you to import most QuickTime-compatible formats, such as .MOV, .MP4.
If the video /movie files you want to import into iMovie are in a format that is incompatible with iMovie, you may be able to convert them into a compatible format with Video Converter Pro for Mac.
iMovie is a proprietary video editing software application which allows Mac users to edit their own home movies. It was originally released by Apple in 1999 as a Mac OS 8 application bundled with the first FireWire-enabled consumer Apple model – iMac DV. Since version 3, iMovie has been a Mac OS X only application bundled in the iLife suite of Macintosh applications.
iMovie '08 was criticised due to a drastic abandonment of some iMovie HD 6 features. New York Times reviewer David Pogue said "iMovie ‘08 is an utter bafflement... is incapable of the more sophisticated editing that the old iMovie made so enjoyable...All visual effects are gone—even basic options like slow motion, reverse motion, fast motion, and black-and-white. And you can’t have more than one project open at a time."
Features removed included the classic timeline, the ability to create DVD chapter markers, support for plugins, and in-timeline audio adjustment and control. Most surprisingly, iMovie '08 imports a much more limited set of video codecs and metadata formats than previous versions of iMovie or today's QuickTime Player. For example, QuickTime Player can be extended to support the FLIP Video 3ivx MPEG-4 codec, but iMovie cannot. Limited import formats also excludes the DV format for storing raw format. As a result, all resulting videos have lossy compression applied and there is no facility for managing full format video. The peculiar lack of QuickTime support means QuickTime Pro can edit a far larger range of video than iMovie '08.
Apple released iMovie HD 6 as a free download to those who had purchased iMovie '08. However, in response to the release of the subsequent newer version of iMovie '09, Apple removed that official iMovie HD 6 download in late January 2009 while Apple also reduced the $299 price tag for Final Cut Express to $199. Several of the features removed from iMovie '08 that were previously in iMovie HD 6 have been restored into iMovie '09.
Video Converter Pro for Mac is the best mac video converter software to convert videos to iMovie supported formats for video editing in iMovie. It helps you convert any popular video formats to iMovie video files with small file size but good quality. Get it now to convert videos for editing in iMovie.
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