How to Enable iMovie Export to MPEG-2 on Mac OS X

iMovie as an efficient video editor for Apple devices - allows you to edit your favorite video clips as per your preferences. However, it has some limitations when it comes to the file formats for importing & exporting. In this article, we will show you iMovie export file types and share a method to help you export iMovie to MPEG-2 on Mac as you want.

Part I. What Formats Can iMovie Export on Mac

While editing the video files using iMovie and exporting (saving) them on to your Mac computer, you can choose any one of the following formats:

- MP4 (MPEG-4) - This is the best video format that is supported by iMovie, Mac, or other Apple devices. An MP4 file can be exported to Mac computer or iPhone/iPad and played on your preferred video player. You can export your videos to MP4 to get small file size without losing their quality.

- MOV (QuickTime Movie) - A video file format supported by many other platforms such as Windows, etc. MOV files can have other information like subtitles, video effects, texts, audio, etc. As long as a MOV file doesn't contain DIVX codecs (which is unlikely while editing the file with iMovie), it can be exported to Mac or an iDevice and opened in your favorite video player.
iMovie Formats, What Can You Import and Export

- AVI (Audio Video Interleave)- Released by Microsoft in the month of November in 1992, AVI is the third popular video file format now. iMovie can export the video files to this format which can be used on Mac computers, iDevices, and devices and computers from different platforms.

- Image Sequence - Yet another format iMovie can export video files to. However, this file format is not used and is not as popular among the users as the above three are. Image Sequence format is mostly used as an alternative where QuickTime can't be used.

- DV- iMovie is also capable of exporting the files in digital video (DV) format. DV is used when recording videos with camcorders. You may want to use this type of file when the video output quality matters and the file size doesn't.

Although there are several other file formats that iMovie can export to Mac, the ones discussed above are most commonly used by Apple gadgets' owners globally.

Note: All the above formats are compatible with iMovie for Mac as well as iPhone and iPad. The only difference is that of screen resolution of the video output that may or may not be less than that acceptable on the computer screens. The resolution of the exported video depends on the size of the iDevice on which it is intended to be used. E.g. the 4K video files cannot be played on older iPhones.

Part II. How to Export iMovie to MPEG-2 on Mac

From above iMovie export file types list, you can see MPEG2 as an export-option was never supported by Apple apps. We would suggest that you render in H.264 for best results. While, if you stick with MPEG-2 for directly playback on DVD player or burning to DVDs, here is a quick workaround for you. Learn workflow as follows:

1. Export uncompressed preferably QuickTime from iMovie.
2. Use Brorsoft Video Converter for Mac to change iMovie format to MPEG-2.

Overall, this Mac video converter is especially designed for macOS Sierra, El Capitan, Yosemite users. With it, you will be able to convert iMovie video to MPEG2 on Mac keeping original quality for enjoying the videos on DVD player. Besides MPEG-2, this program can convert iMovie exported files to MP4, AVI, WMV, FLV, 3GP etc. so that you can watch them on computer, portable media players or upload to YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook anywhere you want. What's more, this iMovie to MPG converter can also works well with different videos from other NLEs like Final Cut Pro, Adobe Premiere Pro, Avid Media Composer, etc on Mac OS X to meet your different needs.

Download iMovie to MPG Converter:

How to Convert iMovie Video to MPEG-2 with iMovie to MPG Converter

Step 1. First of all, export your iMovie videos by selecting "Export using QuickTime ...">save your videos in MOV or other offered formats.

Step 2. Launch Brorsoft Video Converter for Mac. Click the "Add Video" or "Add from folder" button to find the videos that you want to convert to MPEG-2. Here you can import multiple videos.

Step 3. Click on "Format" bar, and select output format from the drop-down list. MPEG-2 format is available in "Common Video" profile list.

Tip: If you like, you can click the "Settings" to set parameters like video codec, resolution, bitrate, frame rate, audio codec... for output.

Step 4. Click the "Convert" button to start iMovie to MPEG-2 conversion on Mac OS X. The excellent Mac Video Converter will do the rest for you automatically. The length of conversion time will depend on the length of your movie, the format you choose, and the speed of the computer. Enjoy.