So the first thing you will want to do is go to www.squared5.com and download MPEG StreamClip. When you start the program you will have an almost empty box that looks like this:

MPEG StreamClip on the Desktop

Next you will want to drag your clip into the center of the box. This can be a clip stored on your desktop, in a folder, or even on the SD card. If you are converting more than a few clips you may want to have MPEG StreamClip do a “batch” conversion. I will cover that procedure in a later post.

The next step will be to click on the File button on the Menu bar. This menu will allow you to convert your video by exporting it to a particular container format. You can use any of the container formats with iMovie, but for best compatibility I recommend that you use the QuickTime format (.MOV).

Dragging the Video on into MPEG StreamClip

And now we get to the Export Settings screen. This screen is where you determine what video and audio codec to use, the quality settings, etc.

Click File, and then select which format you wish to convert to

I would recommend that you avoid most of the settings unless you already know what you are doing. This guide is far too short to cover the surprisingly large amount of options this free program gives you.

So below you will see that I have highlighted a few of the important settings found in MPEG StreamClip.

As some of you may have noticed, iMovie ’08 has issues with the audio codec used by the POV.1. The most important thing for you to do when converting your video is to make sure the sound is set to uncompressed. This will increase your file size, but the advantages of being able to edit the video usually outweigh the disadvantages of a 5% file size increase. The sound options are highlighted in blue, and I would recommend that you also output to Mono due to the fact that the POV.1 records in audio in Mono only.

Once you have set the sound to Uncompressed, I recommend that you set the quality of the video at 100% (highlighted in yellow), leaving you to select your compression method. I recommend that you select H.264 or Apple’s MPEG4 compressor. Once you have selected your codec all you have to do is hit Make Movie (highlighted in green), name the file and decide where it will be saved, and MPEG StreamClip will be begin the conversion process.

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