My experiences of importing different formats into IMovie...!!

Question

I’ve been through a lot of pain with IMovie for the last 6 months, and cracked it a couple of days ago. I therefore feel the need to write about my experiences.
I have lots of old footage on:-
1. DV tape
2. HI8 tapes
3. Sony mini-DVDs
4. DVDs
5. Sony standard def hard disk camcorder files.
1. DV tape
This was a joy to import. OK, so I had to invest a small amount of cash to buy a new cheapie DV camcorder (as my old one broke years ago), but the import itself was easy. Just connect the camcorder, the import window appears, and away to go. Events are imported with the correct date and time, and it even creates a new event for different days imported.
2. HI8 tapes
As I’ve only got a few of these, I decided to ‘cheat’, so I’ve recorded them onto DVDs using my domestic DVD recorder sitting under my TV. So the problem is shifted from HI8 tapes onto DVDs.
3. Sony mini-DVDs
I’ve been trying to crack this issue for months. Clips are imported in random order, even though they are shown in the correct order in the preview. Hopefully it will get sorted. See the following thread:-
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=9404421&tstart=0
4. DVDs
Haven’t tried this yet, until the mini-DVD issue is sorted. I might go down the road of converting the VIDEO_TS folders into DV files using MPEG Streamclip from squared5.com but I’d rather wait and import them ‘properly’ as the software intended.
5. Sony standard def hard disk camcorder files.
Now this is the biggie…..
I had about 1,000 MPEG2 files on my hard disk, that I’ve moved from my camcorder over the years. To my annoyance, when I switched from a PC to the Mac, I needed to buy the MPEG add-on to Quicktime. OK, so no big deal, but even then, all I could get was the video with no sound. After weeks of digging about, I found out that the reason there was no sound is because apparently Quicktime can’t handle MPEG files with AC3 dolby digital sound. As all of my files are recorded in this format, this was a major hurdle.
I then dug around and discovered that on the Sony CD that comes with the camcorder, there is a utility to down mix the AC3 audio to stereo. But it can only do one file at a time – no good for 1,000 files.
Even so, I tried a few files, and yes – they now played under Quicktime WITH audio.
But when doing an import into IMovie 09, the files are greyed out and cannot be selected. So back to the drawing board...
I then looked into various bits of software, finally deciding to get MPEG Streamclip, in order to convert the files in something more Apple friendly.
I did lots of experiments over many weeks in converting files to different formats for import into IMovie, and even though some of them looked excellent, when exporting to different sized export files (e.g. IPod, AppleTV), some of them had artifacts and shimmering all over the place.
Reluctantly I took the helpful advice of someone to convert them into DV files. I say ‘reluctantly’ because the files are HUGE. So much so, I then shelled out (even) more cash on a Drobo to store all the converted DV files.
Next problem...
Because MPEG Streamclip converts the files into DV files, the original date and time information is lost. This is a real pain and means IMovie thinks all the files are 2009.
I then purchased the excellent ‘A better finder renamer’ and ‘A better finder attributes’, to see if I could rename the files. Unfortunately there is no easy way to say ‘change the date/time on the new DV file to be the same as the old MPEG file’ a thousand times over.
I then approached a company about writing a bespoke automator script to do this for me. But it was going to be expensive.
I then set about manually changing some of the dates of the files.
Even then, IMovie was getting confused during the import, and putting some of the scenes in the wrong order. Looks like because MPEG Streamclip is so quick at doing the conversion to DV, that some of the files have the same time stamp, so IMovie gets confused.
I then looked into software to slow my Mac down, so that MPEG Streamclip would run slower (I wanted to guarantee that each file out of the thousand that it created was created in a different MINUTE to the last file). This was proving fruitless however.
I then had useful discussions with Appleman1958 - see thread -
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1979095&tstart=0
who suggested that I could rename the files with the IMovie notation, i.e.
clip-yyyy-mm-dd hh;mm;ss.ext
I even worked out how to do this automatically using ‘a better finder renamer’.
But there was still one more issue.
When the files were imported into IMovie, the thousand files would just come in as one event (unlike importing DV tape where it splits into days).
Being unhappy with this, I had a brain wave and decided to try something else. AppleMan1958 helpfully suggested putting the files into different folders “behind IMovie’s back”, something I was open to doing, but wanted to try something else first...
I resurrected my old camcorder from my attic, and filmed a few minutes of footage.
I then plugged the camcorder into my Mac. To my AMAZEMENT, the import window appeared in IMovie (just like it does for DV tapes), AND the audio played as well as the video. I was absolutely staggered.
I then noticed an ‘archive’ button within the import window, so decided to press it. It then copied the MPEG file from the camcorder onto the hard disk. But it did so in the structure of the original camcorder (i.e. it creates a series of specially named folders, just like on the camcorder).
I then decided to copy all 1,000 of my MPEG2 files into the new special structure that had just been created.
All 1,000 files were then accessible using the standard import function!!!!
(By the way – I’m sure people already know this information – and I’m in no way taking credit for any of it, as it’s probably been suggested by other people in the past).
I’ve now happily imported all of the files.
(Interestingly, a couple of times it said ‘Error!’ on importing some of the files. The third time I tried it, it worked. How random!!)
What amazes me is that now the Mac CAN seemingly handle MPEG video AND ac3 audio, whereas it can’t handle it by double-clicking the files in the finder. I can’t see why this should be the case. Also, it’s really annoying that when importing the files from hard disk, the files are totally greyed out – but it CAN import them by fooling IMovie into thinking it’s a camera archive.
Ofcourse now I’ve spent all this extra money, it’s time to dust off the old camcorder and use that for a few more years, until I pluck up the courage to go hi-def...
Hope you enjoyed reading – thought I’d share my experiences incase there are any newbies out there with similar issues. It’s annoying that Apple make it seem like childsplay to connect your new shiny camcorder to IMovie, but seem give little help in the more technical issues.
Now, if only they’ll fix the mini-DVD import bug too...!
Brad

Answer 1

Hi Brad,
when you use Streamclip to convert media, use the same name for the exported file (only with different extension). Then make a shell script calling
touch -r origFileName.mp2 newFileName.mov
This will copy the exact time and date from origFileName.mp2 to newFileName.mov
The script may look like this (save the file, give an exec permission to it and call it in the right directory):
#!/bin/bash
for i in `ls *.mp2`; do
NEWNAME=$(ls "$i" | sed -e 's/mp2/mov/')
touch -r $i $NEWNAME
done
You may need to adapt the extension names used (in the example above .mp2 is input file to get the date/time stamp from and .mov is the output file to stamp.
Have fun and cheers