iMovie/Digital Camera

[DenimGirl]

Boo!

FACTS:
iMac OS 9.0.4,  iMovie 2.0.1, Digital camera - Sony Cybershot DSC-P32

PROBLEM:
Digital camera takes small 3 minute movies (with sound).  These can be viewed by quicktime, graphic convertor etc no problem but I cannot import them into iMovie  

WHY?

Denim Girl

[DenimGirl]

P.S.  

The movies recorded on the camera are MPEG1

Denim Girl

[ljocampo]

You can use quicktime pro to convert them to a format that iMovie can use.  Apple's pro version of quicktime ($29.95 US) will have no problem opening mpeg files and converting (exporting) them to just about anything you need, including PAL.

[DenimGirl]

Do you know of any freeware that can do this?

[kelly]

No Denim Girl. I don't think there is any.  

The $29 or whatever it is in Australian Dollars is well worth it. IMO.

You need to convert your Movies to the DV Stream to Import them.

QuickTime: Playback and Export of MPEG Video Files in QuickTime Player

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=22180

QuickTime Pro: About Supported File Types

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=42617

But then you have another problem.

You will lose the sound.

QuickTime 5/6: About Using MPEG-1 Media

"It is not possible to export the audio portion of a muxed MPEG-1 audio/video stream using QuickTime. For editing purposes, the entire MPEG-1 stream is treated as a single sample. You may create edit lists to display parts of the stream in the usual way, but if you flatten the movie data, the entire stream is saved, not just the parts displayed in the movie."

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=61608

iMovie 3: No Audio With MPEG-1 Clips

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=42996

In OS X there are ways of "demuxing" the sound and video to get around this.

I can't find any for OS 9.x

Really. To do what you want to do. You need that Camcorder.

[Bill]

I agree with both the above posters. QT pro cuts through a lot of issues. Might not solve all issues but it sure zips past a lot. Well worth the money.

[DenimGirl]

Wow, thanks for that info guys....I think that is probably my best bet.

Ta Much
Denim Girl

[ljocampo]

I've worked around this audio problem by importing the mpeg into a sound program like Peak, saving as a audio file and then importing the audio file into iMovie and syncing it up to the video using timecode or since these are very short clips, visually syncing it.