Import video from i photo into i movie

Question

I have downloaded short video clips from my digital camera into iphoto. I have not been able to figure out how to get these clips into imovie. I've wasted hours trying to find an answer in the tutorials. Maybe a real person can enlighten me. Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

The weird thing is that the day before yesterday I downloaded some other movie clips from my digital camera into iphoto and somehow I got them into imovie but I can' remember how -- I think I copied from iphoto and pasted in imovie.
Maybe yes or maybe not.
You could have copied them from iPhoto to one of the iMovie Event folders using the Finder "Drag 'n Drop" import method. Unfortunately the files will be ignored by iMovie '08 when the application is opened and will not be thumbnailed/cached. For all intentents they will be invisible as far as iMovie '08 is concerned.
Alternatively, you could have converted the file(s) to a compatible compression format it which case they may or may not be useable. If converted by a QT application like QT Pro, GarageBand, iTunes, etc. the video will convert but will not retain any audio. Of course, you can always open iMovie '08 to see if the files are really there and, if they are, open them in the QT Player to see what compression formats they actually contain at this time.
According to your notes, an MPEG1 format would not be compatible -- so how did I get the clips the day before into I movie? I do a lot of "trial and error" things -- something obviously worked. Any idea what I might have done??
I repeat that multiplexed MPEG-1 files are "playback only" compatible with QT applications. They will cannot be converted and retain audio nor can they be edited by QT applications. These files contain blocks of audio data interspersed with blocks of video data in a single data stream to spatially synchronize audio with video and prevent overrun. Fully supported QT files (playback, conversion, and edit compatible files) contain separate audio and video tracks which are synchronized temporally. This is why QT files are so touchy about timecode breaks and proper file termination -- something Windows media players generally ignore.
In any case, as previusly stated you can use any third-party, MPEG-based application to convert your files. My preference is MPEG Streamclip. It is a free application that provides all of the conversion options of QT Pro without spending $30. While it does not allow layering of content with the same or independent scaling/offsets within the display frame, it does handle multiplexed compression formats if you have the proper QT components installed. It also supports audio formats like AC3 which QT does not natively support. In your case the software as downloaded from the internet will convert your Sony clips to DV, AIC (high quality/large files), Motion-JPEG, Photo-JPEG (medium quality/medium size files), or MPEG-4, or H.264 (lower quality/small size files) all of which can be edited by iMovie '08 natively.