Luminous Landscape Forum
Equipment & Techniques => Motion & Video => Topic started by: dwnelson on February 11, 2013, 12:44:40 am
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I bought a GoPro Hero 3 Black and I'm trying to import and slo-mo a 1080p 60fps file into iMovie '11 (v9.0.4), running on OS X Lion (10.7.5). I have an epic bike crash I want to put into high-def slow motion.
1) The video file off of the micro SD card has a H.264 codec, and has an MP4 file extension. This file will import into iMovie '11, but the speed of the playback can't be changed. The options to speed up or slow down the clip just aren't there (I have checked online iMovie '11 tutorials on changing the speed of playback, but somehow these options don't show up in my program with these files). EDIT: This is the case whether or not I "optimize" the file according to iMovie '11 (File --> Optimize Video)
2) GoPro's support website recommends that I use their free converter, Cineform Studio (v1.3.2.165), to convert the GoPro files into a compatible format. Here is their website with their steps, which I followed: http://gopro.com/how-to-prepare-video-files-for-editing-apple-mac/. Note: there is no option for choosing the output file format, only the resolution (1920x1080) and the frame rate (59.94p), neither of which I changed.
3) The output file from Cineform Studio is a .MOV with the following codecs: CFHD, Linear PCM and Timecode. This file is grayed out when I try to import it into iMovie! I find this particularly ironic, as the file prior to conversion was more compatible with iMovie than after the conversion!
Please help!
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Sorry, I can't help, except to say that I am in exactly the same situation. Did you try posting on the GoPro forum?
http://goprouser.freeforums.org/mac-f8.html
There are many comments I've found on the web that say that iMovie can't process GoPro files directly at all, which one reason why CineForm Studio exists. Obviously, this has changed, and in the process it seems that the ability to handle CFHD was removed. So, there is now an incompatibility between CineForm Studio and iMovie. That's my theory, anyway.
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Me again, with the solution: You need the CineForm codec, available for free at:
http://cineform.com/gopro-cineform-decoder
When I installed it, iMovie no longer had those MOV filed grayed out, and they imported OK. Scrubbing was smoother than with the original, too, which is what CineForm is supposed to do for us.