Vegas MPEG-2 to Mac?

vidmanic wrote on 12/7/2008, 5:35 PM
I just bought my wife a mac book pro, and she was hoping to do some light video editing. All of our family footage is HDV captured in Vegas.

It was quite a shock to me that iMovie wasn't able to open the files at all.

Am I screwed, or is there a way to do this with without recapturing or rerendering? Any advise would be much appreciated!

Comments

Chienworks wrote on 12/7/2008, 5:45 PM
You need an MPEG2 codec installed on the MacBook. Is there a Mac equivalent of something like PowerDVD that you can install? This *may* allow iMovie to open MPEG2 files.

You could also install BootCamp and WindowsXP, then use Vegas or Vegas Movie Studio.
sibeliusfan wrote on 12/7/2008, 6:32 PM
No, you don't want to open MPEG-2 in iMovie. I don't think it'll take the audio, or even if it does, the quality won't look very good.

I'd convert the video to something like DV MOV, or maybe MJPEG, or even a high data rate H.264 MOV file first. Then import into iMovie.

Is your wife using iMovie 08 or iMovie 6? If she's using iMovie 08, send her to download the free download of iMovie 6 (every iLife 08 user is entited to it). iMovie 6 is much better, IMO. http://support.apple.com/downloads/iMovie_HD_6

Edited: It's possible that iMovie 08 accepts MPEG-2 files. But I doubt it. I know that iMovie 6 is dodgy with MPEG2 files, even with the MPEG-2 plug-in. I ought to know, I did plenty of tests, trying to get it to work!