what file formats does imovie support

Karsten Schlüter wrote:

Regrind wrote:

... I'll soon be in the market for a new DSLR for a video rig and the list of supported cameras via iMovie is small and seems to have left out quite a few compatible and very good units. There's so much misinformation out there.

although you're in a three old thread ... 😉

Advice is still valueable, except, iM10 doesn't have to use AIC anymore...

The actual version of iMovie supports any actual device, which is within the AVCHD v2 standards - so, up to 1080/60p with 28mbps is fine. But some vDSLR go beyond, so check fora, wether your choice is supported (Apples doens't list ANY avail camera, just the few tested ones.. ). Esp. feedback about future-proof '4k/UHD'-support is actually a bit vague... (iMovies Big Brother FCPX does support these standards .. but 4k gets more and more popular in the amatuer ligue too..., Pana FZ1000 just to mention...

I read that iMovie 8 converted all captured stuff automatically and threw away half the horizontal resolution. Is that still the case with later versions? When I feed AIC or ProRes from an external A/D-device to iMovie (i.e. capture with iMovie) will it just save to disk or will it re-encode it and present this re-encode as iMovies editing format?

Just about anything can be converted to a format iMovie can handle.

Natively, iMovie handles

DV

HDV

AVCHD

Apple Intermediate Codec

Apple Animation Codec

Motion JPEG/A

iFrame

h.264

some, but not all, varieties of MP4

This is not an exhaustive list. There may be others

.mov is a container. If it contains one of the above, it will work.

.mp4 is a container. If it contains one of the above it will work.

.avi is a container. If it contains one of the above, it might work without conversion, but can probably be converted.

If you have Final Cut Pro installed on the same machine, you also get access to ProRes 422 etc.

DIVX, Windows Media files, etc. would need to be converted.

Perian.org publishes several free QuickTime components that let you play many assorted codecs on a Mac. You can typically convert these to a supported codec with a free App like MPEG Streamclip.

Also, Flip4Mac provides a converter for Windows Media files.

Thank you, AppleMan! I've been chasing my tail all over the net trying to figure out the MOV H.264/MPEG-4 conundrum. This summed it up for me.

I'll soon be in the market for a new DSLR for a video rig and the list of supported cameras via iMovie is small and seems to have left out quite a few compatible and very good units. There's so much misinformation out there.

Regrind wrote:

... I'll soon be in the market for a new DSLR for a video rig and the list of supported cameras via iMovie is small and seems to have left out quite a few compatible and very good units. There's so much misinformation out there.

although you're in a three old thread ... 😉

Advice is still valueable, except, iM10 doesn't have to use AIC anymore...

The actual version of iMovie supports any actual device, which is within the AVCHD v2 standards - so, up to 1080/60p with 28mbps is fine. But some vDSLR go beyond, so check fora, wether your choice is supported (Apples doens't list ANY avail camera, just the few tested ones.. ). Esp. feedback about future-proof '4k/UHD'-support is actually a bit vague... (iMovies Big Brother FCPX does support these standards .. but 4k gets more and more popular in the amatuer ligue too..., Pana FZ1000 just to mention...

iMovie is an excellent video editing tool for Mac OS X and iOS users. It comes with awesome features, for example, make your favorite clips into movies, view all your video and audio with ease, share your precious moments instantly. You must want to know the best formats for iMovie. The official line is DV, MPEG-4, MPEG-2, MOV and M4V file types are compatible with iMovie.

Video: MP4, MOV, MPEG-2, AVCHD, DV, HDV, MPEG-4, H.264

Audio: MP3, WAV, M4A, AIFF, AAC

If the imported files are not on the list, you'd better to convert them to iMovie more standard formats.

Does iMovie work well with Zoom Q2HD ? Will I need to use Handy Share version 6

Thank you in advance for your help

Zodiactrax