I’ve been using my Samsung NV24HD camera for some time now to capture both standard resolution (640×480) and high definition (720p) video, but recently my wife needed to import one of those movies into iMovie to edit it down in size. To my surprise, even though Quicktime is able to play the MP4 files created by the Samsung camera, iMovie 08 is unable to properly import the videos and just locks up.

Turns out that the MP4 files made by the Samsung NV24HD camera are a of a non-standard H.264/MPEG-4 AVC format. So what’s to do?

Well, if you’re an Apple user (which I assume you are since you’re reading blog entry about iMovie ), then you’re in luck. There’s a tool you can download called ffmpegX which allows you to convert the MP4 files to iMovie compatible MOV MPEG-4 files. In addition, ffmpegx can convert video files to a multitude of formats inlcuding iPod, iPhone and DivX formats. So even if your issue isnt EXACTLY the video files from the Samsung NV24HD camera, ffmpegx is still a great utility to use for video transcoding/covnverting in OSX

Screen Shot of ffmpegX

The only down side I had to doing this was the time it took to convert. It took over two hours to encode a 25 minute movie at 640×480 on my 2.4ghz Macbook Pro. So if you’re planning to use this method, plan to leave your Mac plugged in for a while.

Also, I’ve yet to try newer iMovie ’09 which also just may fix this issue. When I’m able to get my hot little hands on a copy of iLife ’09, I’ll be sure to let everyone know if it works out!

Hope this post is able to help out my fellow Samsung and Apple users out there!

Cheers!