It is officially stated that AVI is supported by iMovie. There are some instances, however, that importing an .avi file into iMovie doesn’t go successfully. So what is the matter? Well it all depends. In fact, the iMovie only support MP4, M4V, MOV files and some types of AVI files. You may know that AVI file can be associated with three coedcs like AVI, XviD and DivX. Supposed that your handy .avi can’t be recognized by iMovie, it’s because of the AVI codec used to .avi file isn’t compatible with iMovie. Luckily, there is a smarter way to get rid of the incompatibility issues quickly. Simply convert the video files from AVI to a more editing-friendly format for iMovie.

There’s a wide variety of utilities out there that can convert AVI to iMovie compatible video files. If you’re confused about choosing a suitable one, I highly recommend you try Brorsoft Video Converter for Mac, which support all regular format, including but not limited to iMovie, AVI, MOV, MP4, M4V, MPG, Final Cut Pro, iDVD, etc. It lets you transcode AVI files to iMovie in a few clicks: by running it, there’s no need to set the codec by yourself: the Mac program has a optimized preset (Apple Intermediate Codec, which iMovie works best with) for iMovie (iMovie ’11 included). See how below about converting AVI files to iMovie format.

Read More: AVI to Premiere Pro | AVI to Final Cut Pro | Windows Movie Maker AVI Incompatiblity

Simple steps to import AVI files to iMovie without problems

Step 1. Import AVI files to the program

Here you can directly drag & drop the AVI files to the converter, or click “Add Video” or “Add From Folder” button to load your source AVI video files. You can check the “Merge into one file” box to join several AVI videos together.

NOTE: Batch conversion is supported, so you can load more than one file to save time.

Step 2. Select output format for iMovie

You can directly choose the preset for iMovie by clicking “Format” > iMovie and Final Cut Express > Apple Intermediate Codec(AIC)(*.mov) which has been supplied by the AVI to iMovie Mac Converter. The setting also works for iMovie ’08, iMovie ’09, iMovie ’11, and iMovie HD etc. Moreover, the Mac program has some simple edit functions like cropping, splitting, adding effects etc.

Step 3. Start AVI to iMovie conversion on Mac OS X (El Capitan included)

Now click the “Convert” button, and then leave the AVI to iMovie Mac Video Converter to do the rest automatically for you. The converter works on MacBook, MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, iMac powered by El Capitan, Yosemite, Mavericks, Mountain Lion, Lion, or Snow Leopard.

After the AVI to iMovie Mac conversion, you can freely use your AVI files on iMovie ’08, iMovie ’09, iMovie ’11, iMovie HD etc.

Understanding AVI video files

AVI has some drawbacks that make it difficult to use for modern video and video editing software:

* It doesn’t have a standard way to represent time codes, so syncing audio and video is complicated.

* It doesn’t have a way to represent the aspect ratio of the video.

* It wasn’t designed to be used with video compression approaches where one frame is based on the frame that precedes it (like all modern methods)

* It doesn’t support the notion of variable bitrate (VBR) data, presuming that one can find a chunk of data by dividing the size of the video chunk by the duration