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ATPM 12.03
March 2006

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How To

by Sylvester Roque, sroque@atpm.com

Performing a Video Extraction

When my trusty VCR finally died, I had tons of old videotape footage lying around the house. While searching for a replacement, I decided to join the DVR revolution. After all, it seems like everyone was replacing traditional VCRs with some kind of digital recorder. Why shouldn’t I do likewise?

After some searching, I settled on a TiVo unit with a built-in DVD burner. I chose this unit because I could connect a borrowed VCR and transfer the content of my videotapes to the unit’s hard drive. That way I could salvage the tapes without having to buy a VCR or dedicated video capture solution.

With my usual dive-right-in attitude, I purchased the TiVo and connected it to our wireless network. With any luck, a Mac version of TiVoToGo would be available before I had time to start transferring the tapes. If not, surely I could burn the files to DVD and bring them to my Mac to edit in iMovie or Final Cut Express. This should be the easiest project I had undertaken in quite a while.

This Is Easy—Not

Fast-forward several months. It’s time to start transferring and editing tape. TiVoToGo still isn’t available for the Mac, so I’ll have to burn the files to DVD to put them on the Mac. It reminds me a little of the “sneaker net” days, but that’s a minor inconvenience. I’ve already spent several hours recording tapes to the TiVo in real time, and half an hour or so later the DVD is burned and I’m ready to pop it into the Mac and start editing.

I insert the DVD into my Mac, and it plays without a hitch, but that’s where the problems start. DVDs capable of being played in set-top DVD players store their video content in a series of DVD Video Object (VOB) files. The important thing to remember is that these files present problems for most consumer-level video editing software—including iMovie and Final Cut Express. Before being imported and edited, VOB files must be converted to a format the iLife suite understands.

Converting VOB files for use in iLife or Final Cut Express presents two problems. First, these files store the video content that we want in a format known as MPEG-2. Even though it creates standard DVD files, iDVD does not import MPEG-formatted video.

The second problem presented by VOB files is that they have been muxed. Muxing, also known as multiplexing, involves combining several streams of digital information into one file. In the case of DVDs, muxed files typically combine video, one or more audio files, and possibly subtitles, in one file. Before we go any further with the project we need a tool that will convert these files into something that iLife can comprehend. Let’s find our tools and get to work.

Gather Your Tools

I looked around for a while before I found a program called MPEG Streamclip 1.5.1. According to the information page, this program is compatible with Mac OS X 10.2 and higher. It works with QuickTime 6 under Jaguar and QuickTime 7 under Panther and Tiger. Although the program itself is free, in order to examine VOB and other MPEG-2 files you will need to purchase and install the QuickTime MPEG-2 Playback Component (currently $20). The current version of MPEG Streamclip can run on Intel processors through Rosetta, and on PowerPC Macs. A Universal version is anticipated at a later date. MPEG Streamclip can be used as a video player, but its file conversion capabilities are what caught my attention.

Since I eventually want to put the edited footage on DVD, I am most interested in the conversion from VOB files to DV format. This is an important consideration, since Apple recommends that for best results movies that are going to be used in iDVD should be in DV format with an audio sample rate of 48KHz. MPEG Streamclip is capable of handling this conversion quite well. Now that we have found the right tool, let’s get down to work.

Getting Down to Work—Loading the Files

After downloading and installing MPEG Streamclip and the QuickTime MPEG-2 Playback Component, it’s time to get to work. Insert the DVD that you want to retrieve footage from and launch MPEG Streamclip. Choose Command-O, navigate to the DVD, and open its VIDEO_TS folder. A basic DVD, one without complex menus or additional data content, will contain three types of files: IFO, BUP, and VOB. IFO files contain information that the DVD player needs in order to understand the disc’s structure such as total running time and the number of chapters. BUP files are essentially backups of the information contained in the IFO files. The VOB files are the ones of interest to us because they contain the video information we are attempting to extract.

There are several VOB files on any given DVD. How do we know which VOB to attempt to extract? Thankfully there is a pattern to the order of these files. The VIDEO_TS.VOB file contains the main background screen for the DVD. The naming pattern for the remainder of the VOB files provide clues to their content. Each title on the DVD has a corresponding series of VOB files. The VOB files for the first title will all have the number 01 in their title. VOB files for the second title will all have the number 02 in the title and so forth.

Let’s assume for a moment that I want to extract the first thirty minutes of the first title on the disc. Double-click the first VOB file that has “VTS_01” in the title. MPEG Streamclip will ask whether you want to open just that file or all of the files for that title. I usually open all of the VOB files for a given title, because I want to extract multiple clips from the same piece of footage. If you have a good idea which file contain the information that you need, it is possible to open just that file.

When I ran tests for this article I used Streamclip’s option to open all VOB files. I wanted to see how well my system would handle such a task. In about a minute, the first video frame appears in the editing window. This window has controls similar to QuickTime Player. From here you can play the video or scroll to the footage that you want to recover and mark editing points. It doesn’t take long to get used to this window.

howto-editor

The Editing Window

On some videos, the first frame appears in the editing window when you open the file. Sometimes I have to use the playback controls to scroll forward a frame or two until a video frame appears in the window. Once you have found the first frame that you want to salvage, go to the Edit menu and choose Select In. Once that is done, you can use the playback controls or the slider to move to the point where you want to stop. Now return to the Edit Menu and choose Select Out. Select In and Select Out mark the beginning and ending respectively of the clip that you want to extract.

Now that you have marked the beginning and end of the clip, it’s time for extraction. Don’t worry; unlike some trips to the dentist, Streamclip makes this about as painless a process as possible.

Extracting the Video

Since we are ready for extraction, let’s take a look at some of our options. A quick trip to Streamclip’s File menu reveals several options for exporting, converting, and demuxing MPEG files into a variety of other file types. Since the goal of this project is to move the files to iMovie or iDVD, we are interested in the Export to DV option. Choosing this option brings up a dialog allowing us to set exporting options. The default compression is set to DV25. The drop down menu labeled Standard is already set for NTSC with a screen size of 720 × 480 and a frame rate of 29.97. These are the standards for DVD in the US. If you need the PAL standard, which is common in Europe and around the world, you can choose that as an option from this menu. If I understand the documentation correctly, inserting a PAL disc would automatically change the settings to those needed for a PAL DVD. Make sure that you know which format you need.

howto-export

DV Export Options

A variety of other options can be set from this box, including whether to set the screen to the standard 4:3 aspect ratio or the 16:9 ratio needed for widescreen formats. There are a variety of other settings here, including adjustments to color and volume, as well as accounting for progressive video. For my purposes, I am interested in the checkbox that says “Split DV Streams in Segments.” This will divide the resulting file into iMovie-friendly segments that are slightly less than 2 GB.

When you are finished selecting options, choose Make DV to close this dialog. Closing the dialog brings up the standard Save As dialog allowing you to choose where the file will be stored. Extracting video can consume drive space quickly. My test DVD, for example, contained six hours of video footage. I selected a half hour of footage, extracted the video, and saved the resulting files. Four files were created, which consume a total of 6.03 GB of drive space. From the time that I closed the Save As dialog until all files were saved, the process took 13 minutes 37 seconds. Testing was completed on a dual-2GHz G5 with 512 MB of memory. If more than one file needs to be saved, Streamclip saves the files with a .dv extension and three-digit number. This makes it easier to keep the clips in sequence when importing them into iMovie or iDVD. Importing the resulting files into iMovie takes about 1 minute 15 seconds for each file. If you only need to do basic video trimming and editing, you may not even need iMovie. MPEG Streamclip functions well as a basic editor. If you are counting on this program to extract video from encrypted DVDs, you’ll have to look elsewhere. That’s one thing it won’t do.

Final Thoughts

Believe it or not, once I got started this project was fun. There were some problems along the way. It was testing for this project that convinced me I was having the memory problems I wrote about a few months ago. I tried several pieces of software to complete this project. Perhaps one day when I add a little memory to my system I will write a comparison of the software. Along the way I found a nice piece of free software for my digital toolkit.

Also in This Series

Reader Comments (34)

Mike Welfl · March 3, 2006 - 17:05 EST #1
Have you considered the much-less-time-consuming analog-to-DV option?

MacWorld Review: FireWire Digital Video Converters

The article is a bit out of date now, but the information is basically the same. There are now a number of other models from Canopus from which to choose (high end to low end). Best of all, you would be cutting out most of the export, import and translation steps by going this route. Also, your final video quality might not lose as much in the translation process. I don't know this for sure, because I haven't tried it yet.

I've been researching both options for over a year and have frequently thought about doing things exactly as you have done them (I may go both routes simultaneously, just to be safe; but prices will have to continue to drop before I do that); however, I suspect some quality is lost converting from VOB to DV. Am I wrong about that?

I like the idea of converting my many home videos directly to DVD, as you have done, without going through the bottleneck of my computer's hard drive, but I also really want to be able to edit my home videos in iMovie, and I do not like the thought of all the extra steps involved in converting them from VOB to DV and the possibility of quality loss.

I have read a number of customer reviews of analog-to-DV converters at various sites, and most of them are quite positive. Are you in a position to get "loaner" analog-to-DV converters?
Sylvester Roque (ATPM Staff) · March 3, 2006 - 19:41 EST #2
I did consider some of those options briefly. At the time I had a Blue and White G3 that had been upgraded to a G4. I wasn't sure it was going to be up to the task. The other nice thing about this method is that it should work for those folks that have combination video recorders/DVD burners as long as the unit produces standard DVDs.

I'm not in a position to borrow an analog-DV converter at the moment but may be able to do so soon. With the transfers that I have completed thus far there has not been any significant quality loss. The tapes that I have tried are not a good indication though because they started out in pretty bad condition. Any time things get converted from one format to another and then back again (MPEG-DV-MPEG) there is the potential for loos of quality-especially if the format/settings are not chosen correctly.
christopher ashby · March 6, 2006 - 13:34 EST #3
I have been trying for the life of me to watch my many VOB files in quicktime, i have successfully completed this daunting task but without sound...no so good!?

I'm hoping that after trying this mpeg stream program that i will successfully be able to watch the video's in quicktime WITH sound and no have any quality loss...

all thought's are welcome...
Angus Wong · March 16, 2006 - 02:58 EST #4
My road down the Macintosh digital video lane (not counting mucking around with the old "AV" Macs way, way back) began with my purchase of the Sony HDR-HC1 prosumer HDV camcorder around Xmas of 2005.

The only thing I have to add is, get the fastest Macintosh you can afford (Steve, hurry up with the new Intel quads please!) and get lots and lots of (reliable) hard disk storage, especially when fooling around with HD video (and why wouldn't you now?). Hardware RAID is best.

Can someone please resurrect Firewire 800? :-)

PS - I bought Sony only because it was the only solution and I needed a semi-affordable HDV camcorder for an important vacation otherwise...
Lee Bennett (ATPM Staff) · March 16, 2006 - 09:14 EST #5
Angus - something like this may very well be your only option these days.
Bryan Walls · March 30, 2006 - 17:41 EST #6
For a very straight-forward and simple solution for bringing your DVD projects into Quicktime for editing or converting, try using DVDxDV. I have used this app often and with great success:

http://www.dvdxdv.com/DVDxDV.overview.htm

The basic app is $25, and the pro is around $80. Just a heads up - the trial version is free, but will put the words "TRIAL VERSION" across your imported video.
Sylvester Roque (ATPM Staff) · March 30, 2006 - 19:35 EST #7
DVDxDV is oine of the applications that I experimented with while trying this project. I also tried a program called Cinematize from Miraizon.com. Given my current budget, MPEG Streamclip had an advantage. There are also a few other options available. I hope to do a comparison of these options in the near future.
John Dean · April 21, 2006 - 09:07 EST #8
After 25 years or so as a PC user, I just bought a new Intel Mac Mini Duo, primarily because I wanted to edit video that I had archived from my DVR to DVD. I struggled trying to figure out why iMovie did not recognize the .VOB files. Out of desparation, I found this article a tremendous help. I followed the instructions step by step and succeeded at my first editing/DVD creation without the usual efforts and confusion that usually accompany breaking new ground like this. I am enormously grateful for the instructions!
Sylvester Roque · April 21, 2006 - 13:26 EST #9
Thank you for the positive feedback. There are other hardware and software options available. Hardware-based options are out of my budget at the moment. I hope to test some of the other software options soon but many of them require purchasing full versions of software ranging from $25 to $90 each.
alan rouiter · September 10, 2006 - 21:44 EST #10
I have an old beige G3 that I bought at an auction with a CD burner, one of the Apple AV cards, and a copy of Adobe Premiere LE that came with my Orange Micro USB/Firewire cards that I use as a video capture "mule" to move old video tapes of an hour or less to video CD.

The only downside is that it takes two days to compress the file from 6 GB to about 600 MB, so I turn the monitor off and let the machine run while I do other things on my primary machine.

It's not the fastest or most elegant solution, but it's cheap, and it will (eventually) let me move these video tapes to Video CD, which play in most DVD players.
Talsa Johns · October 3, 2006 - 04:50 EST #11
Fantastic! I had lost project files for iMovie and iDVD work, and needed Quicktime files for other realizations of the work, including podcasting, and MPEG Streamclip solved the problem completely --easy extraction/compression into various Quicktime forms: DV and mpeg. Excellent audio capture too. Thanks, Sylvester!
Sylvester Roque (ATPM Staff) · October 3, 2006 - 18:04 EST #12
I'm glad this proved to be a good solution for you. I'm finding this program to be good for rough editing. If all you really need to do is trim footage this will work as well as iMovie.

I recently discovered that I can edit two pieces of footage simultaneously. One window is exporting a finished file while I edit a difference piece of footage in the second window. The only apparent drawback is that you cannot export changes to the second piece of footage until the first one is finished. Working this way may also slow down the export process for the first file a bit.
Sylvester Roque (ATPM Staff) · December 17, 2006 - 15:13 EST #13
I have recently had an issue where MPEG Streamclip refuses to import one of the .vob files from a finished DVD. The same problem occurred with other applications. It doesn't seem to matter whether the files were imported one at a time or as a set.. In most cases the DVD played fine but MPEG Stremclip would simply stop responding while importing the file.

I also received a personal e-mail from a reader describing similar problems. After a few e-mails and some testing it appears that there are two issues which might be causing this problem.

In my case it appears that the DVD burner in my TIVO unit is failing and may not be finalizing disc burns properly. For ATPM reader Darren Milligan the solution was as simple as changing the brand of blank DVD being used. Try this first before you conclude that the burner is bad even if it is a brand you have previously used successfully.

Thanks Darren fro giving us a heads up about that issue.
Val C · January 7, 2007 - 12:55 EST #14
I was excited to see your article because it seemed to address exactly my problem. I downloaded both programs you suggested. I opened MPEG Streamclip and went to the Command O prompt and the VOP files on the dvd appeared. I double-clicked on the title I wanted to extract and absolutely nothing happened. It did not give me the opportunity to open anything.

I am wondering if this is a result of my other problem. I purchased the Quicktime MPEG2 software package. I finished installation but when I looked for it in my applications (and using spotlight) it does not show up anywhere. Only the installer appears. I have loaded it several times now. I was wondering if it just upgrades Quicktime?

I tried dragging the VOB file directly into MPEG Streamclip. It says it is an unsupported file and asks if I want to open it anyway which I tried. The wheel just keeps turning and nothing happens. Only one of the VOB files on the dvd will open in Streamclip, and that is the one frame title page. So I am back where I started except I am out the $20. Any ideas? Thanks. VC
Lee Bennett (ATPM Staff) · January 7, 2007 - 13:26 EST #15
Val - The MPEG Playback Component is a plug-in that's added to the QuickTime package, so you won't find it out in the normal Finder directories. The way you can determine if the component is installed is by right-clicking (or control clicking) a VOB file from a DVD, going to the Open With... command, and selecting QuickTime Player. If it opens and plays, then the playback component is installed.

As for your trouble, check the other VOB files. The one you opened sounds, indeed, like it's only the title page. Try opening one called VTS_01_1.VOB. Sounds like you may have opened VIDEO_TS.VOB.
Lee Bennett (ATPM Staff) · January 7, 2007 - 13:29 EST #16
Val - I forgot to mention two things. 1) when you test a VOB file in QuickTime Player, you may only the get video and not sound. This is normal. 2) if you are using a commercial DVD with encryption (as most movies are), none of this will work. You must use decrypted VOB files that you might find from a recordable DVD you would make yourself. I won't tell you it's impossible to decrypt a commercial DVD, but because doing so violates the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, such information cannot be shared on ATPM (ahemGOOGLEhackcoughcough).
Ziraben · October 28, 2007 - 17:20 EST #17
Even though I have next to ZERO Mac experience, I wanted to thank you for this informative article. I've been doing a lot of work lately with Premiere Elements, NeroVision and PowerProducer/PowerDirector under WinXP, and trying to understand the relation between .vob and title/chapter displayed on my DVD player, in order to help me build better menus, mostly.

An ideal app would display title/chapter info in the same fashion that DVD Audio Extractor does. Maybe that's too much to hope for. hehe

It's coming together, in my mind, slowly but surely, and you've added another morsel of understanding, so you have my gratitude. /wave

btw, pretty good little utility, that Streamclip.
Sylvester Roque (ATPM Staff) · October 28, 2007 - 21:52 EST #18
Thank you for the positive comments. It sounds like you have a pretty good handle on things already.

You're right, Streamclip is a pretty good little utility. New versions are available for both platforms as of September 30, 2007. The Windows version is a beta though.
Karuizawa · December 11, 2007 - 14:16 EST #19
I'm converting VHS tapes for editing in iMovie and then on to DVDs. I can use the VHS/DVD all in one machines and convert the resulting VOB files as you describe. OR I can use EyeTv or Canopus to convert the files. Do you know which will result in the best image quality? BTW, thanks for the great article.
Lee Bennett (ATPM Staff) · December 11, 2007 - 18:41 EST #20
Karuizawa - I'll have to let Sylvester or someone else talk about the EyeTV/Canopus quality settings, but I can tell you that if you have access to some sort of DV camera that has phono plug A/V jacks, you can run the output from your VCR into the DV camera, then run a firewire cable from the camera to your Mac. The camera would just act as a bridge and iMovie can capture in real time as the VCR plays. This would give you the absolute maximum quality without gaining extra compression artifacts from DVD or EyeTV/Canopus recordings. Because, keep in mind, you'll be compressing once again and re-introducing more artifacts if you burn your edited videos back to DVD.
Karuizawa · December 11, 2007 - 22:34 EST #21
Wow! Thanks for the quick reply! Sorry, but what are "phono plug A/V jacks". If those are RCA jacks, I haven't been able to find a camera that receives their input anymore. if they are something else I would love to learn about them. Thanks so much.
Lee Bennett (ATPM Staff) · December 12, 2007 - 00:12 EST #22
Yes, phone plugs are the same as the RCA connectors. True, a lot of consumer cameras don't have these jacks. I happen to use more professional DV cameras which have them. But the smaller consumer cameras will often have the single mini jack (3.5mm aka 1/8th inch) and a breakout cable that gives the video and two stereo audio RCA plugs that you can put into the VCR output.

If all this is too much, then Sylvester should advise about quality settings with the alternative capture methods mentioned on this page. If EyeTV/Canopus can be configured to capture at full resolution (640x480 or 720x480) with adjustments for high quality (maybe even using the DV codec), then that would be superior to ripping from a DVD recording. But if EyeTV/Canopus can only offer smaller size and/or significantly compressed settings, it may be that the DVD recording is the better route. If so, and if possible, record using 1-hour mode on the DVD for the least degradation.
Sylvester Roque (ATPM Staff) · December 12, 2007 - 00:22 EST #23
The "phono plug A/V jacks" are usually RCA jacks as you suspected. Many cameras with "pass thru" capabilities use these jacks. I believe there are also some cameras which use S video connections for the pass thru port. That should provide better quality than the RCA jacks.

I haven't had any experience with either of the products that you mentioned. The few anecdotal reports I have read so far suggest that the output from a quality camera is usually as good or better than some of the dedicated products available. This is somewhat subjective though and posts within the same thread are often contradictory. I'll keep investigating and see if I can find a more definitive answer.
Dawn Dubriel · February 7, 2008 - 17:43 EST #24
Sylvester Roque, you saved my life! Thank you so much for this! I was able to get the downloads I needed and within an hour I was able to import my videos from DVD and save them on my external hard drive and import the folder clips with video and sound into Final Cut Pro HD. You are a lifesaver! God bless you for i would have never figured it out without this tutorial and I am going to send this link to all of my friends in the editing world.
Sylvester Roque (ATPM Staff) · February 7, 2008 - 19:17 EST #25
I'm glad you found this article useful. Any suggestions you may have for future articles would be appreciated.
Nerses Boyadjian · March 6, 2008 - 23:24 EST #26
I created a video clip with iMovie and then burned it with iDVD. Now, we want to add the closing credits at the end. But iDVD nor iMovie see video_ts that iDVD created at burning. How can we solve this problem?
Lee Bennett (ATPM Staff) · March 6, 2008 - 23:38 EST #27
Nerses - the video_ts folder is only a final destination. You generally don't use those files for editing, though there are tools for extracting video from it.

The files inside video_ts are compressed for DVD. Perhaps you know how JPEG images degrade a photo slightly by compression. DVDs just use the motion version of JPEG compression, called MPEG.

You should be saving your iMovie and iDVD projects. The correct workflow would have been to open the iMovie project that you had previously edited, add the credits, and export it for iDVD. Then, open the iDVD project which should still have all your menu configuration. You can then replace the old video that was inserted into iDVD with the newly exported one. Last, you'd burn out a new DVD (video_ts).

If you're saying you made a video_ts folder and deleted your iMovie and iDVD projects, I'm afraid I must inform you that you booboo'd. If you search versiontracker and macupdate, you'll find utilities that can extract video from a DVD so you can edit it, but with caveats:

1) The video may not be quite as good of quality the next time you burn because you're compressing it a second time.

2) It will just be the straight video, so you'll no longer have the edits and transitions in the iMovie project—only a single video file to which you can tack a new clip of end credits.

3) You'll have to completely start over on your iDVD menu setup if you deleted the iDVD project. That part cannot be restored from the video_ts folder.

One application that I've used to extract video from DVDs is MPEG Streamclip, but it requires Apple's MPEG playback component. I already had that because it's part of the Final Cut Pro video editor. If you don't use Final Cut Pro, Apple sells it for $20. but MPEG Streamclip is free from a company called Squared 5.
Lee Bennett (ATPM Staff) · March 6, 2008 - 23:40 EST #28
Oops, I just answered based on the comment notification. Didn't pay attention that this page's article was all about MPEG Streamclip.

But my comment still applies. You have to have MPEG Playback Component to extract from DVDs, and you definitely will no longer have your edits from the iMovie project or the menus from the iDVD project if you didn't save those project files.
Cliff Newman · July 18, 2008 - 21:42 EST #29
Sylvester and Lee, many thanks for this article and comments. I can't tell you how much time I have spent searching for information on how to convert mpeg2 files for editing in iMovie 08. I already had the tools but although Mpeg Streamclip is a super handy tool, it's help file is abysmal. Now I know what to do and I am about to do it - again - for the umpteenth time.

Many thanks,

Cliff
Sylvester Roque (ATPM Staff) · July 18, 2008 - 22:05 EST #30
Glad to help Cliff. I went through a search similar to yours for several weeks. That is what prompted me to write this article. Hopefully a future version of iMovie will handle these files directly.
Cliff Newman · July 25, 2008 - 14:22 EST #31
Just to update my progress putting your excellent words into action: everything went very well with a few minor hiccups. One problem I found is that in spite of iMovie 08 offering me the chance to combine one event with another when opening a new movie file, in fact, the new material seemed to somehow overwrite the previous so that suddenly all the thumbnails disappeared or grayed out from the existing project. My workaround was to open each movie imported as a separate event and then combine the clips from each event into a single project after editing them. Very tedious. BTW, the reason this was a problem for me is that even though my movies usually ran less than an hour, mainly less than 30 minutes, Mpeg Streamclip breaks DV files into segments of less than 2GB when the intent is to import into iMovie. Is that 2GB limit still a problem in iMovie 08? Any help in fine tuning the above will be appreciated.
Cliff
Cliff Newman · July 25, 2008 - 14:33 EST #32
In the interests of easier searching, here is another problem I would like to address concerning matters covered in this article. As warned, but still coming as a shock, was the size of the files generated in converting my mpegs from the Windows environment to Mac via MPEG Streamclip and iMovie. Some of the folders containing all the movie files are over 20GB. Once I have finished the process and made a DVD, what files can I delete from the Movie folder if I want the ability to revisit the project later? What I see are Video TS folders, DV files and M4V files plus event and project folders.
Thanks for any help you can offer.
Cliff
Sylvester Roque (ATPM Staff) · July 26, 2008 - 18:48 EST #33
I am pretty sure I have read that the 2 GB file size limit for imports does not apply to the newer versions of iMovie ('06 and above) I think the limit is based upon available memory. I couldn't find a definite reference so I decided to test it,

My test DV file was 1 hour 22 minutes long and takes up 16,5 GB of drive space. It seems to have imported fine. The import took approximately 22 minutes on a quad core 2.66 GHz Mac Pro with 4 GB of memory. When you export the DV in MPEG Streamclip uncheck the split DV stream in segments option and see if this fixes the problem.
Sylvester Roque (ATPM Staff) · July 26, 2008 - 18:53 EST #34
I haven't done a lot with iMovie '08 recently so I will have to do a bit of research to answer your question about which files can be removed and retain the ability to edit the project. My thinking is that it would be safe to remove the Video TS folder since but keep the Events, M4V and DV files.

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