Convert .ASF files to play in iMovie

Yes, you will need to convert them. If you have QuickTime Pro, you can open the files in it and then convert them to whatever format you wish.

If not, you can download the free MPEG-Streamclip and try it: http://www.squared5.com/svideo/mpeg-streamclip-mac.html

Open it, drag the .asf clip to it and convert.
I could not find out from their website whether Streamclip can convert .asf files, but a search in these discussions produced these threads where it is recommended, and some other info that might be helpful to you:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2282788
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1625544
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1588020

And these:
http://forums.macworld.com/index.php?/topic/91455-how-to-get-asf-into-imovie/
http://www.mp4kits.com/Guides/iMovie/import-asf-to-imovie/

Good luck...Hope one of these can help you get your movies into iMovie.

Hello, and welcome to the discussions,

According to Wikipedia:

+Container format+
+Main article: Advanced Systems Format+

+A WMV file is in most circumstances encapsulated in the Advanced Systems Format (ASF) container format.[5] The file extension .WMV typically describes ASF files that use Windows Media Video codecs. The audio codec used in conjunction with Windows Media Video is typically some version of Windows Media Audio, or in rarer cases, the deprecated Sipro ACELP.net audio codec. Microsoft recommends that ASF files containing non-Windows Media codecs use the generic .ASF file extension.+

+The ASF container can optionally support digital rights management using a combination of elliptic curve cryptography key exchange, DES block cipher, a custom block cipher, RC4 stream cipher and the SHA-1 hashing function.+

+Although WMV is generally packed into the ASF container format, it can also be put into the AVI or Matroska container format. The resulting files have the .AVI and .MKV file extensions, respectively. WMV can be stored in an AVI file when using the WMV 9 Video Compression Manager (VCM) codec implementation.[6][7] Another common way to store WMV in an AVI file is to use the VirtualDub encoder+

So your video is really some form of Windows Media Video, contained in a .ASF file.

To use that video in iMovie, you need to convert it into a format that iMovie 9 accepts: MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DV, HDV, AVCHD, H.264.

How did you convert your VHS tapes to digital? There are several ways to do this, and end up with a Mac-compatible format.

And, are you able to get that .asf video footage into your computer?