Conversion Format For Imovie?

[trolle]

I bought Toast 10 to enable me to convert my MTS camcorder files to allow import into iMovie.

 

I converted to .MOV and .MP4 however iMovie will not allow me to import these formats.

 

What is the best format to convert to if I wish to import into iMovie? I am making a movie about our family history with family interviews, so I'm looking for nice quality.

 

Thanks.

[tsantee]

Typically the h.264 export is a good choice. However, Toast adds a "text track" to the video which causes the file to be unrecognized by iMovie even though it is in the correct format. I have QuickTime 7 Pro which lets me delete the text track to make the file usable by iMovie but that costs $30. Instead you can use the freeware MPEG Streamclip to remove the text track. Open the Toast converted video in MPEG Streamclip and choose Save as... to create a copy at a different location or under a different file name. The copy won't have the text track and iMovie will import it. You may see that MPEG Streamclip requires the $20 Apple QuickTime MPEG 2 Playback Component if it is to work with MPEG 2 files but you won't need that for these mpeg 4 videos.

[trolle]

Thanks for the response. After spending a few hours fiddling with things I somehow got Toast to do a conversion which iMovie would accept without any additional work.

 

I did discover this YouTube clip which explains how to make an MTS file recognized by iMovie for transfer. It works with no problem.

 

I could not discern any difference in quality between the two methods. Hope this helps people out there.