iMovie Rejecting Drag & Drop mp4 Media Imports

Not all Mp4 files work with iMovie. They must be Mp4/AAC. Even an Mp4/AAC file may not work if there is something odd or incompatible with the way it was rendered by the contributing app. If that's the case, you can re-render the clip by running it though the free download, Handbrake.

You can get Handbrake here:

https://handbrake.fr/

A simple way to do it is to open Handbrake and do a File/Open Source. Navigate to your video and choose it as the source from the resulting screen. Then do File/Start Encoding. Wait a couple of minutes for the conversion to

complete. Then save and import the converted clip into iMovie.

-- Rich

Hi,

The first thing to try is deleting preferences, as that procedure can sometimes solve import problems. To delete preferences open iMovie while holding down the Option and Command keys and select to delete preferences in the box that appears. iMovie will open in a new empty library. Reopen your old library to get back to your projects. Possibly you may need to reboot to set the changes.  Deleting preferences is a safe procedure that will not cause data loss or disruption to your project.

-- Rich

I have the same problem. Up until a couple months ago, I could import MP4/AAC files just fine into iMovie, shot on a Pixel3 phone. Now they won't import. Apple must have changed something, because nothing changed on the phone. At this point, I'm used to Apple closing doors to their walled garden, breaking things, being overly restrictive, etc. It's exhausting & unfortunate, because Apple has some great tools, and iMovie is easy to use. I'm not going to spend a bunch of time in HB transcoding all the files we want to import, looking for the exact mux of MP4/AAC that Apple wants. I'm using it to teach my kiddos video editing, but this will continue to push us farther away from the Apple ecosystem.. off to find a good equivalent tool in the Google ecosystem......