MPEG's in iMovie

[womblingfree]

I have a load of mpeg movies I filmed on my Sony Cybershot dsc p10.

I'm trying to make a DVD for a friend but I can't import the films to iMovie or iDVD.

Any ideas?

[Calum]

How are you trying to import them?

Are you sure they're MPEG files and not AVI?

[womblingfree]

Yep they're MPEG files.

in iDVD I'm just going to the movie select column and when that fails I'm just trying to drop them in.

Same with iMovie.

Do Cybershots use some weird compression?

[Calum]

In iMovie, go to 'Import' then bring them in. Drag them onto the Timeline (at the bottom), then go to File->Export/Share (depending on your iMovie version), and click iDVD. The rest is fairly self-explanatory...

Or doesn't this work either?

How big are the files, any chance you could send one to my Gmail account?

[womblingfree]

Nope, it says 'cant import skipping etc...'

Files are between 6 and 15mb.

I can certainly send one to your gmail account if you've got a spare 6mb?

[Calum]

calum DOT handforth AT gmail DOT com

Send it and I'll give it a shot with iMovie and Final Cut.

[womblingfree]

Sent. Thanks

[Calum]

Right, got it. Gmail marked it as Spam for some reason. Anyway, I get the same error as you do in iMovie (but it plays in Quicktime which means it's not in AVI format, and it isn't corrupted), so it must be an issue with iMovie - check the support forums for a few suggestions, but this is really weird.

And it works perfectly in Final Cut!

[womblingfree]

Cheers for the info. Perhaps if I import it into FCE and then export as a Quicktime file it will work?

[Firsty]

You can use FFMPEGX to convert the file to a quicktime thinger that iMovie will like...