[nancyboy41]

hey everyone, say i've got mpeg video of a dave matthews band show, and i want to import it into imovie, and then eventually put it onto idvd, how might i go about doing that? ive tried importing it into imovie, and it will start to, but then as it gets near completion, an error comes up and says that it can't be imported. is this a common problem? and can someone help me with this? thanks a lot.

[edavis]

First, iMovie can only import files less than 2GB in size, about 10 minutes of raw video. If the clip is over 10 minutes long, you would see that kind of problem. The solution is to import into QT Pro, and save as 9 minute segments. Then import into iMovie.

If the clip is less than 2GB/10 minutes, then something else is going on. I would still try importing with QT Pro, and saving as a selfcontained QT movie. Then import. This may correct the problems you're seeing.

If that doesn't work, see help elsewhere. That is all the advice I can give <grin>!

[nancyboy41]

arg...is there anything a little cheaper (free) than quicktime pro? im not gonna be doing any professional editing, so i cant really justify the $30

[Mark E]

are you actually going to be doing any editing to the video? (ie, actually using any of the features of imovie)

if you aren't.. then going through imovie is a pointless step, because it will degrade your final product's quality even more.

if you just want the material on DVD, re-encode it to a DVD compatible MPEG stream (check your original file first, if you're lucky it may already be DVD compliant and will result in you having to do nothing except building the DVD disc itself.)

-Mark

[thorsted]

Which mpeg is it? Mpeg1 or Mpeg2. They are many ways to do what you are trying to do. If you really want it in iMovie, you need to demux the mpeg first. This will give you a seperate audio and video file. Then convert the video to a dv format, then audio to a wav or aif. There are many free programs on versiontracker.com which can do this.

hope this helps.

-thorsted