iMovie does not import a .MOV file
 

Hi, I am doing a project on iMovie for which I am using three video-clips I recorded with my camera.
iMovie has imported two of the three files, but not one, and I do not know why, because QuickTime and iPhoto play it normally, but iMovie would not import it. It is very strange. The clip is only 30MB, and I need it for the project.
Does anyone know what is wrong? Thanks.

define doesnt import, what exactly does imovie say when you try and import it

Nothing at all
 

Apparently iMovie thinks it has imported it, because the process finishes without any trouble. But actually the miniature never appears. And that does not happen with the other clips.

do you have quicktime pro installed? if you do - open the clip in quicktime and then 'save as' (using a different file name) onto the desktop or where ever you are keeping the clips. then try importing the new file into imovie in place of the old one.

I had already tried that solution, but it did not work. It is just a mystery.

Have you tried creating a new project and importing just the problematic file?

Many thanks for your interest. I have given up. It is time consuming to try to find the solution.
I realized iMovie actually imports it, because it is stored many times (as many times as I tried to import it) in the iMovie package folder in the LIBRARY.
So I just can't understand what is wrong and why the miniature never appears.

You are using iMovie '08, correct? Close iMovie. Go into the Event folder that contains the clip in question. Delete the corresponding thumbnail video clip (I believe it is in a sub-folder). Then re-open iMovie - it should scan through your Library and re-generate the thumbnail for the video clip. Does it show up correctly in your library after that?

Thanks for your reply. I have done what you suggested and the clip gets imported to the event folder, but it does not appear on iMovie. The problem remains unsolved.

Have you tried importing the movie into iPhoto then launching the iMovie project and importing the movie from iPhoto?

http://img.skitch.com/20081205-qbg37...xxnwraayk3.png

Ah... VirtualTracy's post above just clued me in to the fact that you are using a digital camera (not a camcorder) to capture your video clips. iMovie doesn't officially support importing videos from still cameras. It sometimes works, but sometimes it doesn't - it's very hit and miss. You should follow VirtualTracy's advice above with all of the video clips from your still camera. iPhoto will handle them consistently and you can still access them from iMovie when you need to use them in your projects.

iMovie not importing iPhoto movies - solved
 

I had the same problem with iMovie not importing .mov or .avi files from iPhoto (taken with my still camera). This had always worked in the past but there was a group of clips that were not imported. I solved this by moving all those clips out of the "event" folder they were in and into a new "event" with a new name. Then I closed iPhoto and reopened iMovie. iMovie opened the window asking if I wanted to import new movies, and all of the formerly neglected clips were imported.

Thanks, I will try that.

I figured out how to do this. Watch my instruction video!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67rUYTQjOG8
ciao

Thanks
 

Thanks for your video. I will try to do it the way you showed it.

iMovies gone a bit crazy. Fancy blocking out all the main formats! I thought Mac were the owners of QuickTime so search me why they've blocked it from being imported into iMovie.

Anyway! Here's an idea...

You may or may not (wink wink) need to purchase the Quicktime Pro. Open the intrepid video file in quicktime and go to
Save for Web...
Choose the Computer tick box then Save.
QuickTime will convert your .mov to a .m4v format video file.

Open iMovie and goto File > Import > Movies...
Find the .m4v that you've converted in quicktime and import it.

iMove will the convert it ***again*** to it own unique formatting and hey-presto! You'll find you're little clip at the end of all your own little clips in the Events window.

Good luck...

Solved!
 

Thanks for that last post- it works perfectly, I didn't even need Quicktime Pro, just used Quicktime Player Version 10.0 (113) which allowed me to do everything you suggested. Thanks!

(PS. can't believe it has taken me this long to register on the site- I have been gleaning info from here for 4+ years thank you MACOSXHINTS!)

I have a similar question, except I cannot even get iMovie to allow me to select the file to import. The file is saved as .mov and when I search for it, iMovie can find it, but it will not allow me to select it to import into iMovie. Any suggestions? I've tried quicktime, iphoto, etc.

Same Problem as afknick
 

I was having the same problem as afknick. I am a brand new Mac user, have many .mov files on an external hard drive. I am able to view these in QT to watch, but could not import them into iMovie to edit. I have QT 10.0 (113), but didn't quite understand how to import. Originally I was trying to drag the files directly, and could not. Then I tried as afknick mentioned to import but although the files showed up, they were not highlighted. ODDLY, though, once I brought one file in (via "save for web") all of a sudden the other files were all highlighted (dark print) so that I could open any of them in iMovie.

My question is, it's taking a very long time now to open this one file just to get a test movie going. (several minutes for a pretty small file) Then I notice it has imported ALL of the sub files that were available even though I only highlighted one file. Is this normal? Is there a way to just import/open a single sub file (.mov) into iMovie?

oops
 

ok, I will withdraw my question about the multiple downloads as I now see I was mistaken. I didn't realize all of the windows were actually frames of the same clip. :confused:

hi. I know that this thread is old. but any suggestions what should I do and check for the same scenario that I can't import my .mov files to iMovie?

thanks.

I followed the advice of a previous poster on this thread and tried exporting my .mov file into .m4v format (in Quicktime it is the "for iPhone" format). That worked for me!

Ok, I'm having the same problems here.....
1. My original file was an .mp4
2. I tried converting to .avi via mpegstreamclip (iMovie wouldn't import .avi file)
3. I tried converting to .m4v via quick time (resulting in 3 files: broadband, cellular and wifi. All of which were .m4v format yet none of them could be imported. iMovie gave me a message saying insufficient permissions. I opened disk utility and repaired disk permissions....no luck)
4. I tried going through iPhoto (no luck)
5. HELP!!

possible solution
 

I was suffering through this issue for ages until I happened upon an unlikely solution: try CHANGING THE FILE NAME. This might sound ridiculously simple, but it worked for me after I went through countless attempts at working around what seemed like an impossible situation.

It turns out that the forward slashes (/) I had used to identify the .mov files I was trying to import was the problem all along. Nothing indicated this, which is why it took me forever to figure it out (no error message, except for a "-37" error that appeared when I tried to import the same files on my old mac, using an older version of iMovie).

This was immensely frustrating but I'm glad it's finally resolved. Hopefully sharing my experience here will be of use to someone out there!

Problem Resolved - Thanks!
 

Hi, sorry to bump an old thread - but I'd personally like to thank mountweary and macosxhints for providing the solution to this tedious problem.

Been researching an answer to this for some time until I came across this post. Your experience has been extremely useful for someone! And I'll definitely be visiting this site first if any Mac related problem comes up again. keep up the good work. Thanks again!