This is something that made me really angry after I bought a GoPro. It’s not that I’m very skilled or spend a lot of time editing GoPro videos, but it was practically impossible. iMovie would constantly freeze.

This is something that made me really angry after I bought a GoPro. It’s not that I’m very skilled or spend a lot of time editing GoPro videos, but it was practically impossible. iMovie would constantly freeze.

Looking for possible solutions I tried all sorts of stupid things like recreating the libraries, reinstalling iMovie and even reinstalling macOS completely! A nonsense that, of course, did not solve the problem.

In the end the explanation was simple: the GoPro records videos in HEVC format by default and iMovie’s support for that format is pretty poor (not to say fucking shitty 👹).

Although I believe it is possible to configure the GoPro to store the videos in H.264, this is not a solution because:

1. You force yourself to record the files in a worse quality format.
2. It does not solve the problem of existing videos.

So an alternative must be found; QuickTime does seem to have better support for HEVC, so it is possible to open the files in QuickTime and export them one by one. The problem? That this is a major pain in the ass.

There is a better and much more convenient solution using a tool that comes by default at least with macOS Monterey: avconvert. Using this tool you download the videos from the GoPro, throw a command, brew a coffee and, when you’re done, the files are converted.

Example:

cd /path/to/videos
for i in $(ls *MP4)
do
    echo $i
    avconvert -p Preset1280x720 --source "${i}" --output "${i}".MOV
done

This will create files with .MOV extension appended to the current name (i.e. GH010459.MP4 becomes GH010459.MP4.MOV). These files can then be imported into the library and can be processed by iMovie without risk of crashing.

Apple, wake up.