How do I save a dvd (with video from a video camera) to edit with imovie?

Question

A friend took videos of an event of mine with his video camera. He then put the clips on a dvd and gave it to me. It was recorded on with a Sony video camera and imported on to a pc with vega's then burned with DVD Complete. He was not sure what format he put it in but maybe something like video_TS.BUP. When I open it up from my desktop it has a audio TS and Video TS folder. When I try to open one of the video folders it goes to iphoto and says unrecognizable format. So does he need to save it to different format and what format would that be. I want to put those clips on my mac to edit to make a movie. I have the newest macbook with the newest imovie. Thanks for all your help!

Answer 1

DVDs are encoded into MPEG2, which iMovie cannot edit. So you need to convert the DVD back to something else. For highest quality, I recommend that you convert the DVD to Apple Intermediate Codec. There is a free tool called MPEG Streamclip that will do this. You will also need to install the Apple QuickTIme MPEG2 Playback Component.
Here are the details.
1) Download and install the Apple MPEG2 QuickTime Component ($20) - available online from Apple.
2) Download and install MPEG Streamclip from Squared 5 (free).
3) Start MPEG Streamclip
4) Insert your DVD into your Mac. If DVD Player or Front Row starts automatically quit those.
5) Open a Finder window. Navigate to your DVD to the Video_TS folder.
6) Drag the .VOB files from the Video_TS folder and drop then into MPEG Streamclip.
7) If MPEG Streamclip offers to fix timecode breaks, say yes.
8) Use FILE/EXPORT TO QUICKTIME to convert the files to Apple Intermediate Codec (or h.264 if you prefer)
9a) Optional: You can deinterlace your footage in this step, if you like
9b) optional: If you know the date and or time of the footage, name your file
clip-yyyy-mm-dd hh;mm;ss
(let mpeg streamclip provide the extension). This will provide metadata that iMovie will use to put the event in the right year and month.
9c) Optional: If you don't want to make one huge clip out of your DVD, you can make smaller clips by using MPEG Streamclip. Move the cursor to the "in" point of the clip, and press i. Move the cursor to the "Out" point of the clip, and press o. Then do steps 8 through 10 and repeat until you have done this for all clips you want.
10) Save the resulting file in a place where you can find it, like your Desktop.
11) Open iMovie.
12) In iMovie, choose FILE/IMPORT/From File and choose the file you saved in steps 8, 9, 10.
13) iMovie will generate thumbnails and you can edit.