And to make things more confusing here's my advice : ) If you are using iMovie to edit Render to 720 x 480 (like chuckerii said) which is the miniDV format standard 30 fps. No compression (huge file) Then to have iMovie recognize the file you have to open it in the Quicktime Player and export as a DV stream. Then put it in the media folder (of your iMovie project). When you launch iMovie it will tell you that's there's a strange file in your media folder but it will put it in your bin so you can use it. Good luck.