Imovie & Quicktime Not Recocignizing Mp4 Files!

[vncstone]

My Quicktime Player is up to date, imovie is fine, plenty of space RAM, virtual memory, and all that, but I am unable to get these programs, or my Sandvox website software to recognize any files generated by this easy vhs to dvd program. I took my computer in to the Mac store today, and they got the mp4 file to import into imovie. They suggested that I reinstall imoive, and i did. That did not solve the problem. I've ordered quicktime pro, and I'm waiting for it now, but I'm running out of confidence. My OS is Mac 10.4.11 with 2 GBs of RAM. It's an intel processor also. Please don't tell me that Tiger will not create movies any longer...This is just the last OS prior to Snow Leopard. The young-man who helped me at the Mac store acted like Tiger OS is an old, old man that's ready to be put in the ground. It seems unfair that updating my OS makes 90% of my software that I spent a small fortune on obsolete. I don't want to update it (again). When I did, only one or two programs worked anyway. Most of my software became instantly obsolete. Is Snow Leapord so dense that it can't run software from the previous OS? WOW...Anyway, if anyone has any suggestions as to why imovie and quicktime will not recognize files made with Easy VHS to DVD software, please let me know, and thanks for letting me rant a little!

[tsantee]

Sorry you're having such an aggravating experience. The Easy VHS to DVD for Mac captures the video in MPEG 2 format which is the one used by video DVD players. It is not compatible with iMovie in that format. At the end of the capture you're given an option to convert the video to the mpeg 4 format usable by iMovie. If you don't choose that option at that time, you need to use a different application later on to do a conversion. The Toast 9 Basic included with the Roxio device lacks the conversion features that are present in the full version of Toast, so it is only useful if you want to make video DVD discs from your captures.

 

You mention getting QuickTime Pro. Actually, QuickTime Pro is simply a registration key you enter in QuickTime Player to unlock the Pro features. It isn't a new application as such. It cannot read MPEG 2 video unless you purchase Apple's QuickTime MPEG2 Playback Component. With QuickTime Pro and the MPEG 2 playback component you can use QuickTime to convert the MPEG 2 video to H.264 MPEG 4 for use in iMovie.

 

You may want to forgo this hassle to load your movies into iMovie and just burn them to video DVD. If your final objective is to have a video DVD discs you can play on a regular DVD player then you can save yourself a lot of time and effort just keeping the video in MPEG 2 format. There are applications such as MPEG Streamclip (freeware but requires Apple's QuickTime MPEG 2 Playback Component) that can trim sections out of MPEG 2 videos without needed to convert them to MPEG 4.

 

Let me know more about what you want the end result to be and I can suggest how to do it the easiest and at the least expense.

[vncstone]

Sorry you're having such an aggravating experience. The Easy VHS to DVD for Mac captures the video in MPEG 2 format which is the one used by video DVD players. It is not compatible with iMovie in that format. At the end of the capture you're given an option to convert the video to the mpeg 4 format usable by iMovie. If you don't choose that option at that time, you need to use a different application later on to do a conversion. The Toast 9 Basic included with the Roxio device lacks the conversion features that are present in the full version of Toast, so it is only useful if you want to make video DVD discs from your captures.

 

You mention getting QuickTime Pro. Actually, QuickTime Pro is simply a registration key you enter in QuickTime Player to unlock the Pro features. It isn't a new application as such. It cannot read MPEG 2 video unless you purchase Apple's QuickTime MPEG2 Playback Component. With QuickTime Pro and the MPEG 2 playback component you can use QuickTime to convert the MPEG 2 video to H.264 MPEG 4 for use in iMovie.

 

You may want to forgo this hassle to load your movies into iMovie and just burn them to video DVD. If your final objective is to have a video DVD discs you can play on a regular DVD player then you can save yourself a lot of time and effort just keeping the video in MPEG 2 format. There are applications such as MPEG Streamclip (freeware but requires Apple's QuickTime MPEG 2 Playback Component) that can trim sections out of MPEG 2 videos without needed to convert them to MPEG 4.

 

Let me know more about what you want the end result to be and I can suggest how to do it the easiest and at the least expense.

 

 

...Thanks a lot for the advice. I appreciate the help. I have to say that I'm a little surprised that getting a file to open in a format that imovie can process could be so complicated. Again, thanks! I'll try what you said.

[zpsp20]

Were you able to transfer your video and able to get to the screen that asks you if you want to go to toast, imovie or quicktime? I was able to and then i would get an error message saying Could not launch application - The application iMovie could not be found. So I was able to find a file called iMovie events and in that file was .mov files that I then dragged to iMovie its transferring right now so will see if that works?!

[zpsp20]

It worked! I was able to find a .mov file of the video in "iMovie events" file and dragged it into iMovie, which took a long time, and then it is fully editable now IN iMovie!!! Let me know if this works for you!

[wellemily]

According Apple official website, iMovie (including iMovie '11/'09/'08) can only import DV, MPEG-4, MPEG-2, MOV and M4V. Though the MP4 file format defines the storage of MPEG-4 audio, scenes and multimedia content using the ISO Base Media File Format, the MP4 file may also contain any number of audio, video, and even subtitle streams. So it is impossible for the MP4 file to determine the type of streams in an MPEG-4 file based on its filename extension alone. Therefore, you may have some clues that why people using Mac always meet difficulty in importing mp4 into iMovie.

The following is a step by step guide on how to import MP4 to iMovie with the help of Bigasoft iMovie Converter for Mac at How to import MP4 to iMovie

[igrowingboy]

thanks for sharing, it will give it a try

[tsantee]

thanks for sharing, it will give it a try

If you are using Roxio Video Capture with the device you need to record in the highest quality in order for it to be imported to iMovie because that records using the Apple Intermediate Codec. If you record in the other quality settings (which are h.264 MPEG 4) it might work to open the video in QuickTime Player and then choose Save As... to save the video as a new file. That may make it importable to iMovie. I haven't tried that. If you are using the Easy VHS to DVD application to capture the video then it is in MPEG 2 format as stated previously in this thread.

[igrowingboy]

If you are using Roxio Video Capture with the device you need to record in the highest quality in order for it to be imported to iMovie because that records using the Apple Intermediate Codec. If you record in the other quality settings (which are h.264 MPEG 4) it might work to open the video in QuickTime Player and then choose Save As... to save the video as a new file. That may make it importable to iMovie. I haven't tried that. If you are using the Easy VHS to DVD application to capture the video then it is in MPEG 2 format as stated previously in this thread.

 

 

thank you for your advice, i will try it later

[fadireslly]

According to Apple Support Website, QuickTime can only support MPEG-4 (.mp4, .m4v), but MP4 is a complex video container with various video and audio codecs. That's why sometimes QuickTime plays MP4 well, sometimes doesn't.

 

Here is a solution I just found on Macrumors forum as following:

 

To solve QuickTime won't play MP4 issue, a strongly recommended solution is to convert all kinds of MP4 videos and movies to QuickTime more compatible formats.

 

Hope it will help you more or less.

[healthyfirstall]

Acting as a video container format, MP4 is the package and can contain video and audio components encoded with different types (codecs). However, QuickTime just supports a few video and audio codecs in MP4 format. That is, if the MP4 video contains QuickTime unsupported audio or video codecs, QuickTime will refuse to play this kind of MP4 files.

 

In order to solve MP4 won't play in QuickTime issue, we had better convert QuickTime unplayable MP4 to QuickTime supported format. This method also can solve can't import MP4 to iTunes, iMovie, Final Cut Pro.

[alva114]

Hi,

 

You can use MP4 to MOV Converter which is capable of converting MP4 video file to Mov file format. So now you don’t have to worry about the file format because you can easily convert your MP4 file to any popular file format.

[Jackpy]

iMovie and Quicktime supports mov formats, you can convert mp4 to mov. Maybe you can visit page http://www.adoreshare.com/freeware.html , this page has many free tools to convert videos to mov including mp4. You can try

[Joineses]

According to your words, I think maybe there is something wrong on the formats. When I find that the player can't play videos and audios, I tried to use a converter to deal with it. Maybe you can solve the problem by converting the files to some formats which are more compatible with imovie and quicktime. Actually, I always convert mp3 to m4r for iPhone ringtones. LOL

[grandpabruce]

Joineses, I doubt seriously that any of the others, in this thread, will see your post. You dug up a 6 year old thread, and the last response was over 2 years ago.