[Kyle76]

I tried importing an mp4 movie file into imovie. it seemed to work, but then it said it was processing the file and creating thumbnails with an estimated time of 900+ minutes. Any idea what I did wrong?

[mduell]

You're on a slow machine with an inefficient app editing a large/complex movie?

[Kyle76]

It's a MBP with 2.4 mhz and 4 gigs of RAM. The movie is two hours of VHS home movies that a local company put on a disk in VOB. I downloaded the conversion program HandBrake to convert to mp4 on the MBP HD and then tried importing it into iMovie.

[analogika]

How long did it take in reality?

Or did you just cancel, unaware that that first estimate on any installation/import/export is almost always absurdly high?

[Kyle76]

After about 10 minutes, I did a force quit. What was the program trying to do at that point? It went from 900+ minutes down to the high 800s. These movies are divided into about 24 chapters. Now when I open the program, and click on that file, there is some content there. It appears that each block the bottom of the screen represents about 4 seconds of video. They will play, but the program ends up shutting down after a minute or two. I guess I must get rid of that file and try to import again. How can I prevent the program from splitting up the video into so many small clips? It seems like that was what was taking so long.

[mduell]

That's how iMovie works... '08 was a complete rewrite that many people don't like, you could try the previous version ('06, now free download from apple.com) to see if it does any better.

[Kyle76]

I downloaded 06, and it looks like it is only marginally quicker than 08. What the heck do these programs do when they import video that takes so long?

[analogika]

iMovie 06 goes through the entire video file and converts it entirely into DV.

iMovie 08 goes through the entire video file and creates a little preview image every 0.5 seconds, so that you can zoom in on the video clip. But it doesn't convert the video.