Apple released its seventh version: iMovie 08 as a replacement for iMovie HD 6 in August, 2007 which is considered by many users completely different from the previous versions. It is without doubt, a brand new tool in good faith of offering simple and fast editing for Mac uses. And indeed it produced great sensation shortly after its appearance.

Everyday, you see comments flooding into various websites large or small, famous or common about this newly born beast, some positive, but mostly negative. To be accurate, this tool was heavily criticized for being deadly simplistic who has abandoned most of features that existed in the previous versions. These discarded features can be listed without an end, like there is no timeline, no DVD chapter marker and plugins support, no audio and visual effects, no themes, no pause control for titles, besides, it can’t extract, control and adjust audio clips, can’t open old films in the previous versions of iMovie, can’t open more than one project etc.

However, still, there are some admiring voice. People who are in favor of iMovie 08 are those who are new to Mac or iMovie or are not good at video or film editing,. And they find it easy to use and understand and can provide a simple, intuitive, fast and smooth way to do some basic editing. In reality, iMovie, although is far from being a professional application is not as hobbled as it first appeared, there are still excellent features to be expected from this simple application: such as, it add support for camcorder, offers simplified drag-and-drop editing, can add text, background, music, transition and still photos, can add to iTunes and publish online, can store finished movies in iTunes for easy viewing in iPod, iPhone, Apple TV etc.

iMovie 08: Adds support for DVD camcorder
iMovie 08 works with many tapeless camcorder including those who record on DVDs that use MPEG-2 (standard definition) and AVCHD (high definition). That greatly improves users’ experience with iMovie, what you need is a USB cable and some type of camcorder (Cannon HR 10 for instance) that record on DVDs. You connect your camcorder with you iMac using the USB cable, open your iMovie 08, then everything will go smoothly.

Attention must be paid to iMovie 08
Although iMovie is said to add support for DVD camcorder, there are still problems when do actual importing and editing in iMovie, which as I know may fall into the following categories and may be more:
Situation 1: “Due to the wide range of media types, and the different ways manufactures store videos on these media types, not all tapeless camcorders are compatible with iMovie 08.”

Situation 2: iMovie 08 is supposed to work with many tapeless camcorders that using MPEG-2 (standard definition), but some DVD camcorder, take Cannon DC 2 for example may produce both standard and high definition MPEG-2 files, how will iMovie 08 deal with this?

Situation 3: Some DVD camcorders without any reason may produce non-MPEG-2 or AVCHD files that compatible with iMovie, this is a very common phenomenon that can’t be neglected.

Situation 4: Some DVD camcorders can only be run on specific systems or iMovie versions, for instance, Panasonic HDC-DX1 requires Mac OS X Leopard 10.5 or later and iMovie 7.1.1 or later.
……….

Keys to the problems:
Don’t worry, there are still ways to help you out.
Solution 1: You may use an application called VisualHub to convert you DVD to DV files, iMovie 08 works perfect with this file format.

Solution 2: Use Movie Converter for Mac, which is till recently, I have found a 100% clean and ideal program that can relieve all your worries perfectly, just have a try.

Movie Converter for Mac: the right one for you

Movie converter for Mac is a powerful 2-in-1 application that integrate DVD ripper and video converter into a single one package that suitable for both home and commercial DVDs which suitable for iMovie 08 and its other version as well. It can rip DVD contents and convert to iMovie compatible MPEG-2, MPEG-4 (MP4, M4V), DV, HDV, MOV etc, it can also convert almost all popular file formats like AVI, WMV, MPG, MP4, FLV, MOV, VOB, 3GP and HD files including AVCHD, MOD, HD WM, HD Divx, HD Xvid, HD MOV, HD H.264 etc with just a few mouse clicks

Mac movie converter has been enhanced that can be run on any kinds of iMac systems including the recently released Mac OS X Snow Lepoard. It can offer you versatile editing features, you can make your own videos. For example, you can choose your favourite DVD clips to convert by Trim, crop off unwanted parts from DVD clips by Crop, apply special effect like Gray, Emboss and Old film, you can also set the specific output parameters for video and audio. Besides, the whole process can be seen from the Preview window.

Tutorial: How to import DVD into iMovie 08
Step 1: Download, install and run Movie Converter for Mac
The program is suitable for both Intel and PowerPC (Snow Lepoard included). Just download, install it and run a test, you will see its main interface as follows:

Step 2: Select the right application for your program
You can select the proper program depending on your specific program requirements.
For DVD Ripper
This program is suitable for both home and commercial DVDs made by uses themselves. The whole importing, converting and editing process can be seen in the picture below:

For Video Converter
This one for those who have their iMovie 08 so-called supported DVD camcorder but haunted by importing problems for some reasons. The following picture guide will help you out.

After converting, you can import the converted files to iMovie for further editing.