[Dutchie]

I am creating a movie on iMovie and want to add my brother's parts as well. He lives in England and I live in New Zealand. Rather than him send me his camera tapes - is there any way he can send them to me on DVD so that I can then import them from there to iMovie? If so, what format should he save the video in, eg what extension should he use - he has a PC? Would he be better to just copy the tapes and send me this?
Any help on this would be much appreciated. I realise that if he sends a copy on DVD it will be uneditable as such - I would just copy it back to a tape on my camera and import it back into iMovie so not worried about that.
Cheers and looking forward to a reply - Liz

[romayfield]

Go to versiontracker.com, dowload MPEG Streamclip. You will also need to purchase the Mpeg2 decode from apple. Its $20 or $30 but well worth it. You can then rip your brother's DVD into almost any formate for editing. You can also setup nifty little batch exports and save yourself some time.

[quicktimekirk]

Exchange "data" stored on DVD's.
iMovie 6 (and lower) is a DV editing application. The "raw" data that makes up your camera imports is DV Stream (.dv) format. Windows Movie Maker software can also import and edit those .dv files.
Both applications can edit and export to DV Stream so the difference in OS's will not be an issue (as long as you only exchange data DVD's that include .dv files).
You on the Mac using iMovie can also add effects, transitions and external audio to your iMovie Projects and then export to full quality QuickTime files. These are also simple .dv files that the PC can understand. They will only be able to cut or trim if you've added anything other than the raw DV Stream data because all of it is considered "raw". They could add to your file but not change anything except by moving or deleting.
A data DVD holds a bit less than 20 minutes of DV Stream format. But because they are light in weight and very sturdy media would be cheaper in postage than sending the dv tape media.
You can burn a data DVD using the Mac Finder and it's as simple as drag, drop and burn. Much faster than burning a DVD that would play in a set top player and as data your files are not converted to MPEG-2 format. Much easier to edit because no conversion software is needed by either user and better quality for the same reasons.

[RichL]

Brother on a PC...so sad. /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/frown.gif
What format are his clips in?
If the format is compatible with your Mac, like QT or AVI, then he just needs to copy them to a data DVD.
If not, what does he have on the Windoze side that can convert them to QT or something else that will work on the Mac.