iMovie HD: Supported video formats

iMovie HD supports multiple video formats and allows you to create projects that are tailored to your specific video format. You can use the following formats in iMovie HD:

• DV
• DV Widescreen
• HDV 1080i (25 and 30 fps)
• HDV 720p (25 and 30 fps)
• MPEG 4 Simple Profile
• iSight

When you create a new project in iMovie HD, click the Video Format disclosure triangle (if it isn't open already) and choose the format for your footage at hand from the pop-up menu.

Make sure that you choose the correct format that matches your footage to avoid additional video clip transcoding. This ensures the highest quality import and may save disk space, depending on the format.

Note: If you attempt to import footage from a camera (other than iSight) that does not match the project format you selected, one of two things will happen:

• If this is the project's first import, iMovie HD may automatically change the project format to match the footage that you're importing.
• iMovie HD may display a warning message that it cannot import the footage because it does not match the project's format.

  

iMovie HD also allows you to import most QuickTime-compatible formats. For more information on how to do this, click here. If you need to mix different footage formats from multiple cameras, click here to find out how to use them all together in one iMovie HD project.