Why My iMovie Can Not Read AVI

Import the AVI files to iMovie from Sony digital camera, flip video camera, or some AVI movies downloaded from the Internet, can be a painful experience for many Mac users. Because we will usually get into some troubles, like it played well in  Quicktime, but when importing to iMovie, it just goes through the copying process, but nothing showed up in the screen. Or imported it into iMovie, but without sound or image.

How does it happened? Because the iMovie can only reads AVI files that both the audio and the video were compressed by using a codec that it can recognized. If iMovie can' t recognize your AVI video files, that would be the codec used to create the AVI file is not supported by iMovie, even if you have installed Perian, a component that can let you play AVI files in QuickTime.

So if you want to edit AVI files in iMovie, the easiest way would be converting them to an iMovie compatible format.

Related Post: How to import AVI files to iMovie