Importing Camera Archive into new iMovie

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Importing Camera Archive into new iMovie

I have years of old AVCHD camera archives on my hard drive from my old camcorders. To work with those files, with prior versions of iMovie it was as simple as importing it (File->Import->Camera Archive as simply stated here: iMovie '11: Import video from a camera archive into iMovie)

Just upgraded to Yosemite and running iMovie 10.0.6. When I use the import feature and navigate to where the archives are on my hard drive, they don't show up as importable. Despite the folders and AVCHD files showing up in Finder, they do not show up in iMovie's menus. What am I missing? Appreciate any thoughts.

Posted on Feb 21, 2015 10:38 PM

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Answer 1

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GeeD

Level 6

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Feb 22, 2015 2:56 AM in response to Chris Brestle

If your archives are standard AVCHD 'packages' I don't know why you can't import them as archives but there is a workaround. Unlike in earlier versions of iMovie you can delve into an AVCHD package and drag and drop clips from the "STREAM" folder directly into an event pane (even directly into a timeline). [AVCHD / BDMV / STREAM]

Geoff.

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Answer 2

Chris Brestle Author

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148 points

Feb 22, 2015 1:07 PM in response to GeeD

Well, interesting thing upon further research.

All my AVCHD archives were in a standard folder under Movies->iMovie Camera Archives. Within that folder there is folder after folder of archives. I can see them just fine in Finder.

When I go to the "iMovie Camera Archives" folder in iMovie it says: "iMovie Camera Archives.localized" and NONE of those sub-folders show up. I copied one of the archives to my desktop and it imported perfectly fine. So it's something odd about the iMovie Camera Archives folder itself that is preventing me from importing all those archives. Odd. Thanks!

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Answer 3

GeeD

Level 6

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Feb 22, 2015 1:43 PM in response to Chris Brestle

Hmm. Don't know why that is. (The .localized extension on the enclosing folder just prompts iMovie to show the name of the folder in the user's system language.)

I haven't heard before of iMovie 9 archives not being importable by iMovie 10. Were they perhaps created in a much older version than iMovie 9?

Still it doesn't seem to be a major obstacle.

Geoff.

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Answer 4

kameaki

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Jun 30, 2015 9:18 AM in response to GeeD

In my case, copying the AVCHD file and its parent folder onto desktop from external HDD solved the problem. Now iMovie 10.0.8 recognizes the movie clips in the AVCHD file. It did not when the clips were in external HDD. I don't know why, though.

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