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Work around for getting Imovies to see "All" your movies! ;-)

Demandarin

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Yeah, plus check this out, I found a good work around on compatibility issues of movies. It's a lil extra work but worth it as both Reel Director and Imovies have their benefits over the other one. Like with imovies, I like all the sound fx and built in themes and theme music.
Ok here we go,

1) u need both Reel Director and Imovies. As this is for moving movies that can't be seen thru imovies, but reel director can.

2)go into reel director, load up the movie u want to use in Imovies. It will then compress the video. Then go back out to main screen. Press the render tab as it will render it making it a final product. Note, rendering the file makes it bigger. For ex. I rendered a 7.8mb file and when it was done, it eneded being like 14mb. Plus thru ifiles, I saw it converts the mp4 into .MOV format.

3)once completed , press the box to save it to camera roll. Once it's saved. Exit the Reel director app.

4) start up imovies apps. Press the + sign for new project and now ur movie "should be" seen by imovies and u can edit it now thru that app.

I like to use a combo of the two apps using various fx and techniques from both. I tried again, with ifiles, to move a mp4 movie into the camera roll folder n imovies still wouldn't see it. I think the movies have to be originally saved in camera roll folder and be in mp4 or mov. Format. The reason imovies could now see the movies thru reel director is because it saved them to camera roll and rendered/converted it to .MOV format. Works every time if u got a movie that reel director sees but imovies doesn't. Just do those steps and it will finally show up in imovies. A lil tedious but works. Plus u can always delete the original movie if u wish cuz in a way,this makes a copy of ur movie but in a way or format to where imovies can see it.
I've tested this with mp4 movies only so far. As for some reason, imovies wont detect those movies on my iPad. That's how I came up with the idea of running them thru reel director, as the workaround has been working for me so far. Also, once rendered reel director converts the files to .MOV format, which "should" definitely be seen by imovies.
 
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Demandarin

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To the top, for those who want to know. Things get lost in the threads very quick I see ;-)
 

andsoitgoes

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From what I have seen about reel director, the rendering takes FOREVER.

If RD drops in price, I might be inclined to try it out, but it hasn't been updated in almost a year.
 

Zwiller5

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This doesn't seem to be working for me. I imported my videos from my Nikon D300s throughout the connection kit, then followed the steps above. It shows up in the camera roll, but iMovie still can't see it. Any ideas?
 
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Demandarin

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If reel director can see it, then it can be rendered and saved. Therefore imovies "should" be able to see it. Did u run ur canon movies thru reel director, rendering them, then saving them to camera roll, then open up imovies? It "should" be able to be seen now. That's how all my movies were. Imovies couldn't see them but reel director did. So I did those steps up there, and now imovies sees those movies I ran thru reel director.
For the other poster, if u have a huge multi gigabyte movie file, of course it'll take longer or a hot sec. For the moivies I did, didn't take to long at all.
 

Zwiller5

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Out of 5 attempts running my videos through reel director, only one could be seen by imovies. It happened to be one that I added pictures and transitions to before I rendered it.
 

OUTL4W

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I just don't like that RD has to compress the video when inserting into project where imove doesn't.
 
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Demandarin

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Out of 5 attempts running my videos through reel director, only one could be seen by imovies. It happened to be one that I added pictures and transitions to before I rendered it.

What format are ur movies originally? How big are the files?
 

Thehamguy1

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.mov format files won't load on my iPad 2

Demandarin, I appreciate your recommendation for reeldirector, which I bought today. I was able to do the video conversion and transfer to Camera Roll. However, the original video file was an .mp4 file. I don't know what format reel director turned it into.
The problem I'm having is that I can't get .mov format files to transfer to the iPad through iTunes. I get a message saying iTunes can't (or won't) transfer the files because they're not playable on the iPad. If I convert them to .mp4 format first, iTunes will sync them. I thought you were saying that .mp4 files are the wrong kind and that reeldirector changes them to .mov files? If that's true, why won't iTunes sync my .mov files?

Maybe I'm too much of an iPad noob (8 days and counting) to get it right.
 
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Demandarin

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Demandarin, I appreciate your recommendation for reeldirector, which I bought today. I was able to do the video conversion and transfer to Camera Roll. However, the original video file was an .mp4 file. I don't know what format reel director turned it into.
The problem I'm having is that I can't get .mov format files to transfer to the iPad through iTunes. I get a message saying iTunes can't (or won't) transfer the files because they're not playable on the iPad. If I convert them to .mp4 format first, iTunes will sync them. I thought you were saying that .mp4 files are the wrong kind and that reeldirector changes them to .mov files? If that's true, why won't iTunes sync my .mov files?

Maybe I'm too much of an iPad noob (8 days and counting) to get it right.

Mp4 files are " supposedly" the format imovies uses BUT it could never access my mp4 movies in my iPad. That's when I came up with the workaround and had noticed that when running them thru reel director, it converted the file to .MOV. Which imovies would see perfectly without needing to sync. I dnt know why imovies would never see my vids, in my iPad, that are in mp4 format. Since I never use desktop, I had to figure some way of getting the vids into imovies and that wrkaround wrked for me n some others. As I have imovies, on my ipad1, I think imovies behaves differently for ipad2, since it's really meant for that device. Even ipad2 owners who record vids with their ipad2 can't get imovies to recognize it unless synced thru iTunes. I find that mighty unnecessary, especially if u use ipad2 to record vid and comes out in appropriate format anyways. Imovies is weird..lol. I'm finding myself using reel director by itself more n more. Although I do like using a combo of the two for different stuff only available on each one.
 

Caraslp

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The way iMovies was able to find my m4p videos was that I had to put them in a photo album folder. In iTunes, I synced that folder. Under the photos tab, I selected, "include videos". They show up in iMovie that way.
 

Thehamguy1

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After a lot of messing about with videos and files, I finally came up with a way to get an externally-shot video onto my iPad 2 and into ReelDirector without having to either jailbreak the iPad or use iTunes. My setup: Kodak zx3 camera with SD card, Apple Camera Connection Kit, ReelDirector.

Record video clip(s) in WVGA format.
Remove SD card from camera, put into CCK.
Use CCK to transfer clip(s) to iPad.
Use ReelDirector to edit clips into a movie (you may have to force-quit & restart RD after assembling your movie to make the "render" option available).
Render your movie.
When done, export to camera roll, YouTube, or wherever you wish.

iMovie can't see the videos either before or after running them through RD, but that doesn't bother me. My goal of using a small, well-featured camera to take video clips and then be able stitch them into a movie while in the field, and without having to take another computer along, has been met. Having to use WVGA instead of a higher-level format doesn't bother me either; I'm not making blockbuster movies here...

It's odd that I sometimes have to force-quit then restart RD in order to get the Render (and Save, Play, Export, etc.) options to come ungrayed. Don't know what's going on with that, but it takes only a few seconds to do, so I try to think of it as a feature, not a bug. ;-) Search on this forum or in the iPad user manual if you need to learn how to force-quit apps.
 

Thehamguy1

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I saw that in one of your posts. Your posts helped me work through this process and you may have already posted the solution I found; if so I missed that one.
It's great to know there's a camera that will do finer resolutions and will work with the iPad. I hope others who want the same functionality you and I were looking for will see your posts. I'm going to have to stick with the camera I have, at least until my money bin fills up again. The resolution is adequate for my 32-inch tv, and I probably need new glasses anyway, so finer-grained video would likely be lost on me (grin).
 

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