1 reply to this topic

[Doug Morris]

After getting VHS to DVD for MAC, I captured about 20 hours of VHS

Yesterday, I looked on this forum and found others with same problem; unable to import files to iMovie 09.

Also, I updated software from v 1.0 to v 1.0.2.

Same problem, greyed out files.

My question: Do I need to capture again the 20 hours of VHS or can I import into iMovie 09 old version files (1.0)
in with new upgrade version(1.0.2) ?

Thank you for your response.
Doug Morris

[tsantee]

The long answer:

The Easy VHS to DVD for Mac captures the video in MPEG 2 format which iMovie cannot read without being converted to a different format.

When version 1.0 and 1.0.1 did the conversion to iMovie it included a text track on the video which causes it to be unrecognized by the iMovie that's part of iLife 08 or 09 (but can be recognized by the older iMovieHD). In order to remove the text track you need to open that converted video file in QuickTime Pro, choose Show Movie Properties, select the text track, click Delete and save the file. It now can be added to iMovie.

Version 1.0.2 does not add the text track so that problem is resolved.

I don't think you can add the previously captured MPEG 2 video to version 1.0.2 so it will do the conversion to the iMovie-compatible format without included the text track.

I have QuickTime Pro so deleting the text track is easy for me. If you don't have that you can buy it from Apple. I don't know if there are other applications that can remove the text track. However, there are other applications that can convert an MPEG 2 video to MPEG 4 or DV for import to iMovie. For instance, if you have a full version of Toast it can convert to MPEG 2 to DV.

Let's go back a step. Why do you want to import this to iMovie? If you only need to do some trimming you can do this without iMovie from the MPEG 2 video files and save a lot of time.