Basics4Mac - Fixing a Movie Clip That Won't Import Into iMovie or Imports With No Sound

Converting your movies

ViddyUp!

Many digital cameras will also take video clips. They are imported into iPhoto along with your images. Most of the time you will find that the movie clips will play just fine in iPhoto. Movie clips from iPhoto can usually be used in iMovie Projects as well, but certain cameras write their movie clips in a format that iMovie can't import or will import the video with no sound.

If iMovie isn't seeing your video clips from iPhoto, try these instructions first.

If the the linked instructions don't work or you end up with a clip that has video but no sound, you will need to convert your movie clip to a format that iMovie can read properly. There are many applications that will convert video files from one format to another. Some are free and some aren't. Many offer a very complicated range of options that can leave your head spinning. I have one recommendation that is cheap and very easy to use.

The software is called ViddyUp! and it's actual job is to convert video for iPods and AppleTV. It just happens that once you get your video in a format the iPod likes, iMovie likes it as well.

Get ViddyUp! here.

ViddyUp! costs $10 to register, but it will convert 2 1/2 minutes worth of video without registration so you can try it out.

Here's how to make the video conversion:

Launch ViddyUp! and go to Preferences. On the Videos tab click on the "Save To" dropdown and choose "Specify Location..." You will get an Open dialog. Navigate to your Movies folder and click Open.
Drag your video clip from iPhoto to the ViddyUp! window. (You can also drag to the ViddyUp! Dock icon which I found easier to do.)
Once the video clip loads in ViddyUp!, you will see a drop down menu for Encoding. Choose iPod & iPhone for TV, MPEG-4. Then click Process.
When the conversion ends, you will have a newly created video clip in your Movies folder with a .mp4 suffix.

To access your video clip in iMovie, go to File / Import / Movies... from the menu bar. Navigate to your Movies folder and choose the clip you want to import.