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 to iMovie is not a straightforward process. However, you won’t be hopeless about the DVD to iMovie task: you are able to do so with the help of a powerful Mac DVD Ripping software. Here we go to find how it works. By the way, the DVD to iMovie guide includes two parts:

• Part 1:How to import commercial DVD into iMovie
• Part 2:How to import non-commercial DVD into iMovie

Part 1. How to import Commercial DVD into iMovie
In the very beginning of the importing DVD to iMovie task, you’d better acknowledge this: 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 iMovie compatible file formats above. It’s a piece of cake if you have a powerful and easy-to-use application such as DVD Ripper for Mac to help you convert DVD to iMovie. The following paragraphs would show you how the Mac app performs during the DVD to iMovie conversion and how it performs. BTW, the Mac DVD Ripper supports converting encrypted DVD.

Just follow these easy steps to convert and import DVD into iMovie:
Step1. Install and Run DVD Ripper for Mac
You can download it for free here:

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

Step2. Load DVD movies
For importing DVD to iMovie, you first need insert your DVD into your DVD drive of course and then drag & drop DVD disc icon on the desktop to the DVD to iMovie program. Or go to “File” menu, choose “Load DVD” to locate the DVD movies (support commercial DVDs and homemade DVDs) you want to add.

Step3. Convert DVD to iMovie on Mac OS X
You can choose to convert DVD with the entire movie, any chapter, or any segment of DVD.

This smart DVD to iMovie Ripper allows you to split according to chapters. To extract certain DVD clips, you can drag the slider to the exact point you want to cut the DVD, and click “scissors” icon. When the settings are done, close the window and click “Yes” in pop-up dialogue to save the settings.

Then select “iMovie” preset from output format list. After setting the output settings, you can just click the Convert button to start to convert DVD to iMovie (iMovie ’11, iMovie ’09, iMovie ’08, iMovie HD supported).

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

Step4. Import the output files into iMovie.

Open iMovie and choose File -> Import Movies to import the converted 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 DVD to iMovie friendly format first. Just follow the above tutorial to do the conversion.
Learn more: How to import video files such as WMV, AVI, M2TS to iMovie – convert videos to iMovie