Importing VHS video

I used a video transfer device (Pinnacle for Mac) to get analog video into my iMac, and, according to the messages from the device software, all went perfectly well. It was 1.5 hours in a 1.9 GB file. The last message said the file (MPEG4)is in iTunes, but it isn't there. I found it in Quick Time, but Quick Times says it can't be played because it isn't a movie.
Pinnacle wasn't much help. The Genius Bar guys at the Apple retail store were great and tried hard with several ideas, but couldn't sovle the problem. We uninstalled, downloaded from Pinnacle, and other things they tried and I didn't understand. Still can't see my movie.
Any suggestions?

Try using VLC to play the file. Could also try MPEGstreamclip.
To convert it you have to have Quicktime Pro, and converting it will probably mean re-coding it and getting a loss in quality due to the double encode. You may need to find something that will let you demux the streams, then recombine them, or use a pass-through feature which does essentially the same thing. FFmpegX does that, and AVIdemux (AVIdemux is a bit temperamental on Macs). Sorry if that is a bit brief but video is not simple.

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    Message was edited by: Matt Clifton

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