Video to iMovie?

[Iolaire]

A friend will convert my wedding video to a digital format on a PC. What is the best format for him to save it to so that he can give it to me on a CD? I want to edit/play with it via iMovie. The only format that I see that iMovie will import is DV Stream?

My goal is to for him to be able to get the digital video (an hour or hour +) on 1 CD with out making it to low quality.

Thank you,
iolaire

[pcouture]

Sorry mate, won't happen!

You will lose A LOT of quality as soon as you move away from a DV stream, which is equivalent to raw footage from a DV cam. In that particular format, for 1 hour +, you're looking at a file in the tens of GB!!!

If you're prepared to burn several CDs AND your friend has the possibility of exporting to Quicktime, you might want to try exporting segments to Quicktime at a high quality resolution (like 640 X 480, which exceeds a standard TV anyway).

The second step would be for you to use Quicktime Pro to open these files, and use the export feature to go to DV stream, which iMovie will import.

[Iolaire]

Thanks, right now the video is on a VHS type and I only have 3 gig's free. So I think I'll just wait for now.

One more question, should I expect to find standard TV inputs into a cheap dv camera? i.e. if I buy a camera can I use it to digitalize the wedding tape by taping the VHS stream onto the digital tape and thus be able to import it to my mac via Firewire?

[pcouture]

If it's worth anything,

I own a Sony Digital 8 camcorder which can act as an analog to digital converter through the input (see testuser's message above).

Digital 8 will give you the same quality as DV, except the camera uses Hi8 tapes to record and those are quite a bit cheaper to buy than mini DV.

The camcorder itself is also cheaper. I guess the only compromise has to do with size: they're not quite as small as mini DV units, but they're still very portale.

I love my Sony Digital 8!