iMovie makes viewing and working with video as intuitive as enjoying your photos. A built-in library automatically organizes your video, so all the clips you've captured and movies you've created are just a click away. With its revolutionary interface, iMovie makes it quick and easy to browse your library and create new movies. And iMovie is built for sharing. In just a few steps, you can add movies to your website, publish them on YouTube, and create versions for iPod, iPhone, and Apple TV.

Importing DVD clips into iMovie is not a straightforward process. However, there is a way of doing this using Mac DVD Ripping software.

Part 1. How to import Commercial DVD into iMovie

iMovie will only allow you to import the following file formats:

• Movie File Type
• MPEG-2 and AVCHD
• DV-Standard and HDV (High Definition Video)
• QuickTime Movie
• MEPG-4

If you want to put Commercial DVD to iMovie, you need to convert DVD to the video formats that are compatible with iMovie. I recommend you use this powerful and easy-to-use DVD Ripper for Mac which is fast in ripping DVD to MP4. It supports converting encrypted DVD.

Just follow these easy steps to convert and import DVD to iMovie:

1Install and Run DVD Ripper for Mac

You can download it for free here:

• Intel Version
• PowerPC Version

To install it, simply mount the .dmg archive by double-clicking it, and copy the application to your applications folder.

2Load DVD movies

Insert your DVD into your DVD drive. Click the "Load DVD" Or "Load IFO" button to load your DVD.

3Convert DVD to iMovie on Mac OS X

After you added your DVD movie, you can choose any titles or chapters you want to convert by ticking the check boxes before them so that You can choose to convert DVD with the entire movie or just one or several chapters at will; or you can choose to convert a segment of the DVD movie.

Then select "iMovie Video MPEG-4(mp4)" from output format list. After setting the output settings, you can just click the Convert button to start converting your DVD Movies for importing to iMovie.

You can learn more: How to edit, crop, trim DVD clips and capture pictures on Mac OS X?

4Import the output MP4 files into iMovie.

Open iMovie and choose File -> Import Movies to import the converted Mp4 video. And then you can edit the movie according to your needs.

Part 2. How to import Non-Commercial DVD into iMovie

1. Insert DVD.
2. Open Disk Utility.
3. Select the disk and then select "New Image". Save the disk image wherever is convenient, such as the desktop.
   
4. Once the disk image is written, open iMovie.
5. Mount the new disk image. A "Camera Detected, Scanning Contents" window will appear in iMovie, followed by an import window. You can now import the DVD contents and start editing away.

Update: This method is not a surefire solution for importing non-commercial DVD to iMovie, we suggest you get iSkysoft DVD Ripper for Mac to convert the your DVD to iMovie friendly format first. Just follow the above tutorial to do the conversion. Know more: How to import video files such as WMV, AVI, M2TS to iMovie - convert videos to iMovie