I want to edit my home movies that are on a dvd but iMovie will not let me import them. What do I do?

Did you first transfer the "VIDEO_TS" folder to your dard drive? In side the VIDEO_TS folder you will find your recordings mixed with a lot of files you do not need.

Open the VIDEO_TS folder on your inserted DVD. Take the movie files out. The names will be something like "VTS_02_1.VOB" and the size will be over 500 GIG usually.

iMovie 11 will import these files, but remember you cannot import the sound from the files, only the video.

If you want to import the movie and sound together, you will have to use a program like HandBreak to change the MPEG format (standard for DVD) to mp4. Then import the file into iMovie.

Keep in mind that you will loose a great deal of the quality because of all the format changes and recompressing. You could end up with a blurry mess.

I just learned about this the hard way. I transferred the MPEG files from my DVD to iMovie 11. It took about 3 hours to do 2 hours of video. Then when the import was finally finished, there was no sound. NOT a happy surprise.

This tip will show you how to import your home movie on DVD into iMovie 11 for editing. It will not work on commercial, copy-protected DVDs. (Ripping commercial DVDs is against the Terms of Use of the Apple Discussions).

DVDs are encoded by iDVD into MPEG2, which iMovie cannot edit. So you need to convert the DVD into a codec that iMovie can edit. For highest quality, I recommend that you convert the DVD to Apple Intermediate Codec. There is a free tool called MPEG Streamclip that will do this. You will also need to install the Apple QuickTIme MPEG2 Playback Component.

Here are the details.

1) Download and install the Apple MPEG2 QuickTime Component ($20) - available online from Apple.

2) Download and install MPEG Streamclip from Squared 5 (free).

3) Start MPEG Streamclip

4) Insert your DVD into your Mac. If DVD Player or Front Row starts automatically, quit those.

5) Open a Finder window. Navigate to the DVD.

6) Drag the Video_TS folder from your DVD and drop it into MPEG Streamclip.

7) If MPEG Streamclip offers to fix timecode breaks, say yes.

8) Use FILE/EXPORT USING QUICKTIME to convert the files to Apple Intermediate Codec (or h.264 if you prefer)

9) Optional steps.

9a) Optional: You can deinterlace your footage in this step, if you like. If you don't know which is best, try a short clip both ways. I usually do not deinterlace.

9b) Optional: If you know the date and or time of the footage, name your file

clip-yyyy-mm-dd hh;mm;ss

(let mpeg streamclip provide the extension). This will provide metadata that iMovie will use to put the event in the right year and month.

9c) Optional: If you don't want to make one huge clip out of your DVD, you can make smaller clips by using MPEG Streamclip. Move the cursor to the "in" point of the clip, and press i. Move the cursor to the "Out" point of the clip, and press o. Then do steps 8 through 10 and repeat until you have done this for all clips you want.

10) Save the resulting file in a place where you can find it, like your Desktop.

11) Open iMovie.

12) In iMovie, choose FILE/IMPORT/Movies... and choose the file you saved in steps 8, 9, 10.

13) iMovie will generate thumbnails and you can edit.

Appleman's suggestion is the best one. However, if you do not have a relatively new (2009 and newer) MacPro with a lot of RAM, the process described above could take up to 20 hours to complete.

The most frustrating time consumption is waiting and waiting for a process(like exporting and importing) to complete.

Vernon Alexander is right, imports/exports can be time consuming. So just be patient and budget your time as best you can.

Update. I did not like MPEG Streamclip because I thought it was slow. Iwas wrong. I was using an older version. I upgraded to 1.9.3b5 and the performance increased 4 fold. Also, using the "Fix Timecode Breaks" and using the highest setting and multipass the video actually seems to have improved.

Hanadbreak is faster, but I have been putting up with some degradation in quality and quite a few hiccups during playback. MPEG Streemclip takes just a few minutes longer using the highest setting and the video is smooth, clear and well....perfect.

Thanks elikness. You get another gold star...LOL

Is there no way to EXTRACT video from DVD without loss? On Windows I use TMPGEnc Xpress to extract video from disks I use in my DVD Recorder then edit. Its a brillian one stop solution! I see nothing like that for Mac. I've searched for solution many times so far. For this one reason I am having to use Win7 on my new MBP13.

Sad to see Mac is still lagging in software options. Very sad.

There are a lot of ways. Ripit is my choice. There is also MTR 4.0 (MacTheRipper) it gives you more choices than you need. Everyone seems to be using RipIt and I can see why, it is fast and symple.

(http://thelittleappfactory.com/ripit/)

If you want your Movie to look, play and act JUST LIKE a movie you downloaded from the iTunes Store use iVI.

(http://www.southpolesoftware.com/iVI/iVIFAQ.php)

iVI will turn your Ripit movie file into a iTunes movie will all the trimmings.

I have all my DVD's in iTunes now and can watch them on my Apple TV connected to a 162" big screen TV/Entertainment room.

If you leave the DVD rip in the "RipIt" format, you can use Apple's DVD Player to show the movie right off your hard drive. But I use iVI because it compreses the movie into a m4v file which is about 1.8 GIG in size compaired to the 8 GIG size of teh RAW DVD rip.

If you are moving from a PC to a Mac you might be frustrated for a whle, but you can do everything on the Macthat you could on your PC. But there is a learning curve and it takes time.

Vernon Alexander wrote:

There are a lot of ways. Ripit is my choice. There is also MTR 4.0 (MacTheRipper) it gives you more choices than you need. Everyone seems to be using RipIt and I can see why, it is fast and symple.

(http://thelittleappfactory.com/ripit/)

If you want your Movie to look, play and act JUST LIKE a movie you downloaded from the iTunes Store use iVI.

(http://www.southpolesoftware.com/iVI/iVIFAQ.php)

iVI will turn your Ripit movie file into a iTunes movie will all the trimmings.

Thank you. But from what you say it doesn't seem to do the same thing I want. I am ripping a DVDR with Ripit right now, lets see what it does.

Let me explain the workflow I'm looking for, maybe someone can help, hopefully.

STEP 1 - RIPPING:

TMPGEnc Xpress rips the actual 'programs' from DVDR, if a TV program was 1 hour long, the file is about 1 GB, if it was 2.5 hour long, the file is like 2.5 GB. It doesn't rip the VOB files in 1GB segments BUT it leaves the files in VOB format in the app's .DVDDATA container format. So there is no quality loss!

Ok Ripit just finished and YES! it ripped a 2.15 hour program and file size is 2.15GB. It didn't take long so there was no conversion and the container file is .DVDMEDIA

Seems like half my dilema is resolved!

STEP 2 - EDIT and CONVERT to MP4 or M4V (any Apple friendly format):

Now I need to find a nice video editor that will accept this .DVDMEDIA format. Any suggestions?

Scratch my previous post. .DVDMEDIA is just a folder containing VIDEO_TS folder. I can just drag this folder out of a DVD, don't need Ripit to do it.

Sigh..

Oh WOW I forgot to mention Handbreak.

It is free and it does an excellent job of converting VIDEO_TS folder to a MP4. It flys as fast as your computer is capable so my Mac Mini serer with a i7 quad core takes about 25 minutes to convert a VIDEO_TS folder of 8 GIG to a MP4.

If that helps..LOL

Yep, I use Handbrake, but it can't edit. I don't want to convert the whole DVD when I just want to keep a few minutes here and there. Thanks though! But I think the same solution is just not available on the Mac.

I am talking about DVDR, from DVD Recorder device (like VCR). Not commercial DVDs.

Oh. Well I use iMovie to do editing, like taking out the commercials for example. But it is not a perfect solution. What PC software are you using and what are you using it for? I have Windows 7 that I use with VM Fusion.

Is there a better way on the PC because I want FAST and PERFECT.

Vernon Alexander wrote:

Is there a better way on the PC because I want FAST and PERFECT.

Of course there is. If you ask me, I know a better way to do almost everything on PC. I'm farely new to OS X but so far I faced so many obstacles that it has completely given me a new found respect for Win 7 and all the solutions you have on it.

Here is what you need. http://www.pegasys-inc.com/en/index.html

TMPGEnc Xpress 4 and now its updated version Video Mastering Works 5 "extracts" the video from your DVD. It means it sees the recorded shows and its length, then rips each show as one file. I say extract, because there is no conversion, its just the VOB data in the apps own container, cut according to the shows you've recorded.

When rip ends, the files are in the app ready for you to edit using a simplified iMovie like interface. And then you export it to ANY format your heart desires. I've had this workflow fine tuned to such a level that it takes me 10 minutes to go thru the whole DVD and keep the amount of video I wanted then start the exporting.

I guarantee you, if your needs are the same as mine, this is THE app for you. I guess I'm going to have to stick with it and keep Win7 on Parallels.

I followed AppleMan1958's instructions, downloading both pieces of software. But I'm getting a message that I can't install the Quicktime component because I already have it. And I'm getting a message in Streamline that I need to download the QuickTime component! How do I get around this?