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Importing .MOD files without having the .MOI files

Hi

I have a Panasonic sdr-s100 which records MPEG2 video in the .MOD/.MOI format onto sd cards.

Apart from the current 40+ restriction issue (see other posts), iMovie 08 imports new footage perfectly fine from my sd-card through my card reader.

The real problem I am having is with the older footage I recorded over the last year and a half. You see, I deleted all the .MOI files which were - until iMovie 08 got released - commonly regarded as useless once you had the movie/.MOD files on your hard drive. It was assumed these were only needed by the camcorder. How wrong we all were!!

So now I am having these neatly organized folders on my hard drive (100GB>) containing just the .MOD files, which iMovie refuses to recognize under File>Import. Copying the .MOD files back to an sd-card seemed like another option but iMovie 08 needs the accompanying .MOI files for the "Camera detected" message to pop up.

There is another thread (on which I have also posted), where we are trying to find some way to regenerate those .MOI files or use other similar methods, but none are really successful as yet. We also contacted JVC and Panasonic but it is not looking good so far. See here: http://forums.macosxhints.com/showthread.php?t=77489

Ideally, iMovie 08 would import my .MOD files straight from my hard drive without the need for .MOI files and simply use the .MOD's date modified info as the time stamp within iMovie 08. I do not wish to go via the DV route and re-import etc as it is way too time-consuming.

Has anyone got any other tips or similar problems? In the meantime I have sent this issue to Apple Feedback.

Message was edited by: RafDam

MacBook Pro Core Duo 2Gz, PowerMac G5, Mac OS X (10.4.10)

Posted on Sep 9, 2007 5:28 AM

24 replies

Sep 12, 2007 7:01 PM in response to RafDam

WOW This works great i am using a 500 GB HDD to do it and it works Thanks For Finding a Way to get this to work.
Thanks David
PS Now to find a easy/quick way to change .MOD To .MPG

RafDam Author

Level 1

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Sep 13, 2007 12:26 PM in response to Mac's Rock

PS Now to find a easy/quick way to change .MOD To .MPG

Use Automator. Does it in seconds 🙂

By the way, I also tried to use my USB drive instead of a stick/sd card, but iMovie does not recognize it as a camera for some reason even though I put the MP_Root in the root directory of my drive as it should be. Saying that, there is other stuff on my USB drive. Does this matter? Was yours a 'clean' drive? Unfortunately I can not try this out right now as I first would need to buy a new drive to copy this stuff onto 😟 The drive is formatted as HFS+ journaled btw.

F Shippey

Level 7

21,500 points

Sep 13, 2007 8:02 PM in response to RafDam

The drive is formatted as HFS+ journaled btw

It appears iMovie '08 sees Mac OS Extended formated USB drives as a 'normal' external hard drive and FAT 32 formated USB drives as a camera.

F Shippey

RafDam Author

Level 1

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Sep 14, 2007 12:40 AM in response to F Shippey

It appears iMovie '08 sees Mac OS Extended formated USB drives as a 'normal' external hard drive and FAT 32 formated USB drives as a camera.

Thanks Shippey

I'll try with a FAT32 drive and will post the outcome here. It won't be until mid next week though as I will be away.

Sep 14, 2007 7:02 PM in response to RafDam

Yea you need a HDD Formated FAT32 as it being formated OSX it doesn't work
And Automator works like a treat not that i had used it before
David

RafDam Author

Level 1

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Sep 20, 2007 1:06 PM in response to Mac's Rock

It's working now. Basically, it is not enough to have a FAT32 formatted drive, but you also cannot have any other content sitting on it apart from the MP_Root folder.

Hope this helps!

Simon Ho

Level 1

0 points

Oct 1, 2007 3:02 AM in response to RafDam

Does anyone know whether there are any quality loss when MOD files get imported as MOV files into iMovie? I clearly noticed reduced quality in the DVD I burned with the imported MOV files vs the originals played with my DV. Reason I ask is I'm wondering whether to keep the original MOD files, or just the imported MOV versions?

RafDam Author

Level 1

0 points

Oct 1, 2007 3:51 AM in response to Simon Ho

There is no quality loss at all on importing the MOD files. IM08 just puts a .MOV "wrapper" around the file. Sadly, the quality loss you are talking about happens during exporting the final movie... a hot topic on the iMovie08 forums.

Hope this helps, Raf

Message was edited by: RafDam

Jon Walker

Level 6

19,467 points

Oct 1, 2007 4:00 AM in response to Simon Ho

Does anyone know whether there are any quality loss when MOD files get imported as MOV files into iMovie?

The degree of visual degradation is dependent on the compression format used in your MOV container and its video data rate. If you wish to view/download a sample comparison between MPEG-2 original video and the Apple Intermediate Codec, then here is a URL to one example. (NOTE: This is a 260 MB file. The MPEG-2 track must download completely before the rest of the movie and/or progress bar will even become active. I.e., this movie takes a long time to load to QT Player or the browser QT plug-in so it may be easier to use FTP.)

http://homepage.mac.com/jrwalker4/.Public/MPEGAICComp.mov

Reason I ask is I'm wondering whether to keep the original MOD files, or just the imported MOV versions?

If made properly to preserve quality, the converted files would be many times larger than the original "storage" format. I personally would archive the original data since it can always be re-converted if ever needed again and trash the converted file once the current project is finished. (I assume you would keep a "display" copy of the finished product in H.264/AAC for viewing purposes.)

Importing .MOD files without having the .MOI files