Editing movies in iMovie

Cheetah Designs · 8 Dec 2011 at 19:07

Is it possible to edit a movie in iMovie without importing it into iMovies library first.

All I wish to do it trim a movie down, keeping the quality/encoding settings EXACTLY the same as source for both sound and video. I'm guessing iMovie will try and do some magic post/pre processing and maybe compress it.

Is this possible? If not, is there any freeware that will allow me to do this?

(I was then going to use handbrake to compress it)

Kawolski · 9 Dec 2011 at 01:03

Can't comment on iMovie's ability to do this.
However, try MPEG Streamclip mate.
Awesome bit of kit. It's free and I would imagine more than adequate for your needs.

PardonTheWait · 9 Dec 2011 at 01:04

Why don't you want iMovie to compress it, if you're just going to compress it with Handbrake afterwards anyway?

Cheetah Designs · 11 Dec 2011 at 00:04

PardonTheWait said:
Why don't you want iMovie to compress it, if you're just going to compress it with Handbrake afterwards anyway?

Can't Handbrake achieve a better size/quality ratio?

PardonTheWait · 11 Dec 2011 at 18:12

iMovie can export using Quicktime, there's quite a few options. Have a poke around and see what you reckon