TNT: DYN-O-MITE TIPS AND TRICKS by Paul Sahner

September 20, 2002

Pump Up iMovie

iMovie is one the biggest breakthroughs in personal computing in recent history. And seeing how it comes free with every new Mac, it is definitely a cool thing. But it still is no Final Cut Pro. It does have limits. But not as many as you might think.

Lately many developers have been setting their sights on making iMovie more powerful with great plug-ins and special effects. They undoubtedly bring more value to this already fantastic program. They've made everything from complex transitions to amazing "green-screen" effects.

But what about things plug-ins can't do? Have you ever wanted to take a .mov file you have and put it in your iMovie? You go to Import but alas, nothing will happen. But I promise you, it can be done. All you need is a little time, and a common tool that Apple already gives you! QuickTime itself can do this for you.

Actually, to be more specific, you will need QuickTime Pro. This goes for $29.95 at the Apple online store. The reason for this is that iMovie only will accept movie files which are encoded as .dv or digital video. QuickTime Pro can convert almost any video file into a digital video format. The only downfall to .dv is that it produces very large files. A 2 Mb .mov file could easily become a 300 MB .dv file.

Anyway, to get back to the point, once you've "Exported" the file to .dv using QuickTime Pro (also known as a "DV Stream"), you can the put it into your iMovie project. You can do this one of two ways: One is through the "Import" option in iMovie, and another is you can manually drag the file to the "media" folder inside of your iMovie project. There you have it. Now you can add all the cool iMovie effects to practically any video you have on your Mac!