Edit iMovie in Adobe Premiere

[lslough]

I am taking over a video file from a teammate who started the video files in iMovie. Is there any way to take the raw file and open in Adobe Premiere, and going forward work in Adobe Premiere? Or is the only option to export the iMovie file as is and edit in Adobe Premiere?

[David Arbor]

If you can export an XML file then you can import that into Premiere. Note, this would have to be the older .xml format, and not the newer .fcpxml that Final Cut Pro X uses. Even if you could export a .xml, things will be lost in translation. Edits and other basic things should be preserved just fine, but audio, effects, transitions, and other things might be lost or mistranslated.

[Meg The Dog]

Unless you want to use your second option (editing a exported movie of the iMovie edit), the way from iMovie to Premiere Pro is a bit convoluted:

If the version of iMovie used was very recent, and if your teammate also has FCP-X, you can send the iMovie project to FCP-X. Once in FCP-X, you can export an XML.

Because the XML that FCP-X exports is not compatible with Premiere Pro, you will need the third party app X to CC by Intelligent Assistance:

XtoCC

which will convert the file to an acceptable Premiere format.

Once converted, you would import that converted XML into Premiere Pro, relink the media files (if necessary) and the continue to edit.

MtD

[katheriner90150677]

Meg_The_Dog will this process still keep the audio, effects and transitions in tact to edit in Premiere Pro?

[Meg The Dog]

Regarding effects and transitions, most likely not. XML is an extremely terse transfer language, and proprietary effects and transitions found in iMovie have no corresponding equivalents in Premiere Pro.

The best you could hope for is that your order of scenes and their correct durations, and relationships to any audio tracks you used,  are preserved. You might get lucky and simple transitions such as dissolves would be transferred.

MtD