Question about importing in iMovie

[guest-age.livejournal.com]

I just switched from a PC to a Mac, and I'm attempting to make my first video in iMovie, having previously used Windows Movie Maker. I have two questions that I hope you nice people can help me with.

1) When I was importing my video (episodes of a TV show in .mp4 format, 350 MB apiece if it matters) and I asked it to import five episodes, the first four imported properly and quickly. The fifth is taking a really long time. It says it's got 180+ minutes left to finish importing, and it's already been going for almost half an hour. I tried canceling it and restarting it, but that didn't help. I'm willing to be patient and wait if this is simply something that is normal for the program, but since it didn't do this with the first four episodes, I'm guessing this isn't normal. Any suggestions on what to do?

2) I've looked in the memories, but mostly what I've found under the iMovie section are just questions like this one or about other aspects of the program. Are there any good, basic tutorials for iMovie as a whole? Any suggestions you might have would be lovely.

Thank you for any help you can offer.

ETA: Got it. Thanks to everyone for their help. :)

Comments

[par-avion.livejournal.com]

iMovie converts footage to DV when it imports. Importing entire episodes is a bad idea because it takes up enormous amounts of HD space. I think that you are probably out of space.

You want to clip the scenes you want to use and import only those.

Honestly, iMovie is a frustrating program and not that many people still use it. The best tutorial I know of is at animemusicvideos.org.

[guest-age.livejournal.com]

It says I've got over 9 GB of space left on my hard drive, so I don't think space is an issue.

You want to clip the scenes you want to use and import only those.

How might I do that? The only way to clip scenes I know of was after they were imported into the program. Is there another program I would need to do that?

I was trying to use Final Cut Pro, but when I tried to open it, it told me I needed an AGP video card, and I didn't know what that was, so I figured I'd try to use iMovie instead.

[par-avion.livejournal.com]

According to wikipedia, DV takes up 12.66 GB per hour. 9GB may be cuttting it very, very close for a 45 minute ep. And you're going to need free HD space to actually create the vid.

You can use Quicktime Pro or Mpegstreamclip to clip scenes:
http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/24055

I'd suggest that you take a look around mac_vidding_101 for more mac-specific advice. I haven't vidded in over a year, in part due to frustration with iMovie, and I don't have any experience with FCP or Mpegstreamclip.

[guest-age.livejournal.com]

Thank you for the help. Using QuickTime Pro to clip scenes is working out great. Thank you so much.

[aycheb.livejournal.com]

I found the tutorials at:

http://www.animemusicvideos.org/guides/imovieguide/tutorial.html

really helpful when I started out using iMovie. They're written by an anime vidder and for an early version of the programme (4.01) but were still good for getting the general idea of how things worked.

[guest-age.livejournal.com]

Thank you! That tutorial is very helpful! :)