Is there a way to take iMovie project into Premiere Pro on Windows

[katheriner90150677]

Hi. So a singer has asked me if I can carry on editing their music video for them, lip-syncing, transitions, titles etc to give it a more professional look. They've done most of the work in iMovie on their Macbook. I use Premiere Pro on Windows. Is there anything that they can do at their end, convert it etc to keep all the editing layers in tact for me to open in Premiere Pro and start off where they left? Hope somebody can help me!!

[Michael Grenadier · Accepted solution]

It's not simple, but you may be able to make this work the way I did a few years ago but most of the process requires working on a mac.  You can bring an imovie project in to fcpX (I think there's a free trial). from there you can export an xml.   you can then import the xml into davinci resolve (there's a free version) and then you can export an xml from resolve that will import into premiere.   I had no luck bringing the xml from fpcx directly into premiere but import and export out of resolve did work.  Linking to the media may be a little tricky but should be doable... There's a program that will allow you to read a macosextended drive on a windows machine and a program from the same people that will allow a mac to read and right to a windows drive.  Not sure how that will work with the newer mac partition scheme...   This is the company that makes both of them. https://www.paragon-software.com/us/main-page/.  Might be simpler just to bring it into fcpX and figure out a way to generate a timecode window that reflects the source timecode and rebuild it in premiere...

[Jimena22460407mpso]

I've seen lots of comments elsewhere that reccomend importing an XML file. What I did, because I didn't want to download any other application, was I put a bunch of short black dividers (Titles with just a ".") in iMovie, and then I just looked for those on Premiere. But I had to split all the clips again. I'll never start another project on iMovie again. 

[Richard van den Boogaard]

You could have used PPro built-in scene edit detection for that purpose.

[Warren Heaton]

Have the singer export a movie file from iMovie for reference.

Then...

Send projects to Final Cut Pro from iMovie on Mac

https://support.apple.com/guide/imovie/send-projects-to-final-cut-pro-movcbf7e2a3f/mac

This, of course, requires Final Cut Pro, but it's the part that should go smoothly.  The edit in Final Cut Pro should look identical to the edit in iMovie.

And then...

Easily migrate from Final Cut Pro

https://helpx.adobe.com/premiere-pro/how-to/migrate-from-final-cut-pro.html

This is a must watch.  Christine Steele gets into just about everything you need to be aware of.

As far as keeping all of the editing intact goes, it really depends on the complexity of the edit.  The video clips used along with order in which they were assembled should come across okay.  Everything else (Transitions, Effects, Graphics, Color Correction) probably will not.