iMovie won't import MP4 files? A Quick Fix

[lauralily520]

Although iMovie says it supports MP4, sometimes you will find it a painful experience importing MP4 to iMovie for further video editing. Why? That's beacause iMovie prefer MPEG-4 and H.264 codecs instead of others while MP4 can contain various video codecs. So if your MP4 videos are not accepted by iMovie, it's probably because of the video codec incompatibility. Fortunately, if you're in such a situation, there is an easy way to fix the issue. The easy option is to convert MP4 files to iMovie supported video format first.

To do the MP4 files and iMovie task, Brorsoft Video Converter for Mac will give you a big hand. It is an powerful video converter, editor and player. It offers an optimized iMovie preset preset for easy acess. With it, you can easily transcode MP4 to Apple Intermediate Codec .MOV, which ensures maximum editing quality and efficiency when working with iMovie. The all-in-one toolkit can also convert among all popular video format like AVI, MKV, VOB, WMV, FLV, etc. for conveniet editing and playing on Mac OS X (Mavericks and Mountain Lion included). Besides, this program also supports some video editing functions. With these function, you can crop the frame size, add watermark, load subtitle, merge several videos into one file, etc. Just follow the guideline below, you can convert and import MP4 files to iMovie easily and successfully.

How to convert MP4 files to iMovie compatible AIC MOV

1. Add MP4 files

Run the Video Converter. Directly drag and drop the VOB files which you want to convert to the main display window of the program. To save your time, you can load multiple files at a time for this program supports batch conversion. You can also merge several files into one.

2. Select the output format

Click "format" bar, choose iMovie/FCE -- > Apple InterMediate Codec(AIC) (*.mov) as the output format. The output video can be imported to iMovie 11/iMovie 09/iMovie 08 directly.

Tip: Furthermore, you are provided some useful edit functions cropping, trimming, adding watermark, attaching subtitles for pre-editing your video files so that you can simplify your iMovie editing.

3. Start the MP4 to iMovie conversion

After all the settings are done, click the Convert button to start converting your MP4 videos to AIC MOV for iMovie. The conversion will finish soon if your videos are too large.

After the conversion, click "Open" to locate the result videos and then launch iMovie, choose File > Import > Movies..., to import the converted MP4 video into iMovie; prepare for editing. You will find that it's just a piece of cake to edit MP4 files in iMovie.

iMovie supported formats

The following formats can be recognized by iMovie: DV, DV Widescreen, HDV 1080i (25 and 30 fps), HDV 720p (25 and 30 fps), MPEG 4 Simple Profile and iSight. If your videos are in these formats but iMovie still doesn't accept them, you will need to re-encode the videos.

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Source: How to get MP4 files to play nicely in iMovie

 

[grewetab]

Why Sometimes Can't Import MP4 to iMovie?

Reason One: iMovie only supports importing MP4 formats with MPEG4/AAC or H.264/AAC data, not all kinds of MP4 formats. Some MP4 files from like Sony, Hybrid camcorders and other devices cannot be accepted by iMovie.

Reason Two: iMovie contains all the essential codecs to read MP4 files. Any different codecs included in audio and subtitle will cause the issue. In the circumstances, we still cannot successfully import MP4 files to iMovie.

All in all, to smoothly import MP4 to iMovie, you'd better to convert these MP4 files to iMovie totally compatible MP4 or MOV (QuickTime) formats.

Source:
http://www.faasoft.com/articles/mp4-to-imovie-converter.html

It will tell you how to import MP4 and many other video formats like AVI, WMV ,MOV, MKV, FLV, SWF, etc into iMovie.

 

[grabbetterlife]

Technically, iMovie does import MP4 video. However, iMovie only import MP4 files that are encoded with MPEG4/AAC or H.264/AAC data. And yet, MP4 is a video container format that may contain various audio and video codec (and sometimes even subtitle streams included). If the MP4 file is not encoded with iMovie support codec, iMovie will refuse to import this kind of MP4 video.

To solve can't import MP4 to iMovie, you may try the following method https://www.idealshare.net/mp4-imovie-solution.html