Why won't my mpeg import into imovie?

Question

Hi,
Just got a new macbookpro 17inch. Liking it but having to learn the switch to mac. I have an mpeg file i want to try to resize, but imovie doesn't seem to recognize it at all. I thought macs were supposed to be the computers where everything just worked. Why won't it let me take this in? I thought mpegs were fairly common and quicktime has no problem opening it. Am I using the wrong program? Do I need to go back onto my ancient Toshiba and use Windows Movie Maker just to resize a video?

Answer 1

I wonder why apple didn't just make it so that imovie could read those files. If windows movie maker can than it must be possible to do. Wouldn't they have anticipated that someone might take video on a hand held camera and then want to edit that video in some way? Is there some reason or advantage of them having made it this way instead of not just making the program do everything that someone might want to do?
There is a problem regarding the difference in technologies. QT Is Apple's proprietary multimedia software system. It is modeled on magnetic film strips and/or video tape which employ separate audio and video heads/tracks for playback. MPEG-1 files, on the other hand, contain a single stream of data which is composed of interspersed blocks of audio and video data. Thus, the different technologies require different "engines" to work properly. Since Apple only supports its own technology base as it applies to rigid standards, anything outside this scope is not supported. For instance, QT is very particular when it comes to files being properly terminated and proper time coded while muxed formats like MPEG-1, MPEG-2, VOB, Flash, etc. files are notorious for having broken time codes since these files rely on the physical interspersing of data blocks. Windows files are also very rely on FourCC codes/extension for proper playback while QT files frequently rely on the specific data instead for proper playback. In addition, files like MPEG-2 are edited at the GOP (group of pictures) level which normally consist of a repeated cycle of I-, P-, and B-frame types (e.g., IBBPBBPBBPBBPBB) while QT files are edited at the individual frame level. And so on and so forth. While some applications may contain "hybrid" engines to handle multiple technologies, Apple has typically supported its own technologies. They are, for instance, not in the habit of supporting codecs contained in the AVI file container which Microsoft dropped a decade ago but which is still in such common use by Windows users that it has not been allowed to die a dignified death. In short, Apple is looking ahead to the new codecs which are highly scalable and very versatile in terms of data rates/file size efficiency which can handle anything from e-mail clips up to SD content and beyond to full HD encodings. While an MPEG-1 VCD may offer compatibility with a wide range of older devices it does not offer the same quality to storage capacity ratio offered by H.264/AAC encoded files.
how did you quote just specific parts and make them blue.
I use the Level 4 mini text editor.
Are you typing in your own html codes or something?
Sometimes. For instance, the new forms are not as HTML "quote" or "line feed" friendly as the old forum. So I no longer indent the blue quoted text and use the "
" (paragraph) to add additional line spacing.