Importing BPAV files into iMovie on Mac OS X

If you have some BPAV files form a Sony XDCAM EX camcorder like Sony EX3, you may want to edit them besides playback. Usually, we can view footages from a BPAV folder with VLC perfectly. Whereas, when you import and edit BPAV files in iMovie, you would find that iMovie doesn't recognize the MP4s in the BPAV file. Got lost? Don't worry. In this article, we will give you some hints to handle BPAV files in iMovie without hassle.

From reading the Apple website it looks like Mpeg4s should work in iMovie... but they don't. Actually, XDCAM EX MP4 files are not mpeg4 files. MP4 is a file wrapper (like MXF or MOV) and is not a compression scheme (which is what MPEG4 is) - MP4 files can store MPEG4 data BUT XDCAM EX MP4 files are MPEG2 encoded. That's reason why iMovie can't recognize your BPAV.

The ultimate solution we got is to find a video converter tool like Brorsoft Video Converter for Mac to convert the MP4 within the BPAV file to Apple InterMediate Codec, which is the best edit format for iMovie. This program can work as a professional BPAV file converter for Mac. It allows you to convert BPAV .mp4 to AIC .mov for iMovie with several simple steps. Besides, it allows you to do some premiere editing work on Mac before transcoding like cropping, trimming, adding watermark, etc. Now download it and follow below steps to convert BPAV files to iMovie on Mac(El Capitan included).

Transcode and Import BPAV files to iMovie

Step 1. Load MP4 from BPAV

Drag BPAV files to the program directly. Or go to the "File" menu, choose "Add Video" to locate the BPAV files you want to add. You can add several files to do batch conversion.

Step 2. Select the output format

You can choose iMovie/FCE --> Apple InterMediate Codec(AIC) (*.mov) as the output format. The output format is designed for iMovie 11/iMovie 09/iMovie 08 specially.

Tip: Furthermore, you are provided some useful edit functions cropping, trimming, adding watermark, attaching subtitles for pre-editing your video files so that you can simplify your iMovie editing.

Step 3. Start BPAV to iMovie conversion on Mac

Click the "Convert" button to start the BPAV .mp4 to iMovie conversion.

After the conversion, click "Open" to locate the result videos and then launch iMovie,choose File > Import > Movies..., to import the converted BPAV footage into iMovie.