Help iMovie import my files!

February 9, 2009 10:35 PM

iMovie help! I've converted a VHS tape to digital format using EyeTV Plus on my iMac. I've followed the steps to convert the file to iMovie using the EyeTV program. This creates a iMovie project file and 22 5-minute clips in a .dv format. Problems arise when I open iMovie to start editing.

When I open the iMovie project file, it says "Found 11 stray files that don't belong in the Project folder. Okay to move them to trash?" I clicked on leave them where they are. And then it loads the other 11 files to iMovie. These are just the odd-numbered files for some reason.

So, in the Media folder I still have the 22 files. The odd-numbered clips have an iMovie icon and the even-numbered clips have a Quicktime icon. They are all still .dv files. I can view all of the files in Quicktime and put them all into iDVD, but I cannot load the even-numbered clips into iMovie (they are ghosted when I try to import files into iMovie).

Am I doing something wrong? Is there a way to do something to the files to make them load in iMovie? Could it be a problem happening earlier in the encoding process? Is there another free or cheap movie editing program I can use? I just need to clip the some of the files, not really looking to add effects or transitions or anything, and burn to a DVD.

This is on a Mac 10.4 with iMovie 2.1.2.

posted by wsquared to Technology (1 answer total)

I don't think you're doing anything wrong. To get around what might be a bug, you could try dragging all the files out of the iMovie project. Just right-click on the project file in the Finder and choose Show Contents to access the movie clips. Then create a new project in iMovie and import all the clips.
posted by pmbuko at 6:51 PM on February 10, 2009