How to Import MPEG-2 Video to iMovie on Mac?

“I have a load of MPEG-2 videos that were encoded on my friends Windows computer, is there an easy (and preferably free) way to import MPEG-2 video to iMovie without the quality degrading?”

Have problem with ingesting MPEG-2 video to iMovie for further editing like the situation mentioned above? Or you may have some MPEG-2 videos stored on your Mac and want to use them on iMovie to create some fantastic shows to share with your friends or family? Sometimes, you may get errors: file import failure, audio going out of sync, or video but no audio when brought into the timeline.

mpeg-2 to imovie

Since MPEG-2 is ideal for recording and playback, the high-compressed codec is not ideal for editing. In fact, iMovie generally can recognize MPEG files. However, if your MPEG files are multiplexed MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 videos, iMovie won’t accept them because of the codec incompatibility.

Some main formats that iMovie supported are allowed below:



List of iMovie exported video formats:



If you temporarily have no idea about what to do, you can take MPEG-2 video to iMovie conversion into consideration. The conversion is darn easy to be finished with only several clicks without loss of video quality. On this occasion, to achieve that, you are highly recommended to ask a professional program for help- Pavtube HD Video Converter for Mac. It has a built-in preset for iMovie so that users can directly select it to get iMovie files.

How to import MPEG-2 video to iMovie on Mac?

Step 1: Download Mac HD Video Converter, and follow the prompts to install the program. When the installation is complete, the best MPEG-2 Converter will launch automatically.

Step 2: Click “Add video” button to load MPEG-2 recordings or directly drag the files into file list. By default, the files are selected. You can delete files which you don’t want to import to.



Step 3: Click “Format” bar to determine output format. For best image quality, click the format bar and choose “iMovie and Final Cut Express>>Apple InterMediate Codec (AIC) (*.mov)” as output format.



Step 4: Click “Settings” button to customize the output video and audio settings by yourself. But if you are not good at it, you’d better use the default parameters, they will ensure you a good balance between file size and image quality basically. You can change the resolution, bit rate, frame rate as you need.

Step 5: You can preview to check the final result. Once you are satisfied with it, click the “Convert” button to start converting MPEG-2 to AIC MOV for editing in iMovie flawlessly. It will take you a little while.

Conclusion: Once the conversion process is complete, you can click “Open Folder” button to get the generated files for editing MEPG-2 video in iMovie with optimum performance. Let’s have a try!

Further Reading:

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