In this post, I’d like to show how you can add YouTube videos to iMovie for editing. Obviously, you cannot get it done directly. You need to download the online videos from YouTube in the first place. Then, there’s the chance to import the downloaded video files into your iMovie project.

How to Download Videos from YouTube?

To download videos from YouTube onto Mac, the only tool you need is Free YouTube Downloader.

1. Download and install Free YouTube Downloader to your Mac.

Download Free YouTube Downloader for Mac (1.55M)

2. Add YouTube video URLs

Run Free YouTube Downloader. Visit YouTube website and go to the YouTube video page you’d like to download to your Mac. Copy the video link from the address bar of your browser.

Paste the link to the Video Link: box and click the +Add button, then it will be added to the manager panel at the top of the interface. To add more videos, just copy and paste the link to the the box and click the +Add button again. Then there will be a list of URL of Videos showing in the manager panel.

3. Choose output format and output directory

There are three output formats for you to choose from: MP4, FLV or 3GP. Since you are going to add the downloaded videos to iMovie, you need to choose MP4 as the output format.

Note: Video formats accepted by iMovie include MPEG-2 and AVCHD, DV-Standard and HDV (High Definition Video), QuickTime Movie, MEPG-4.

Click the … button to locate to the folder you want to output the downloaded YouTube videos to.

4. Start to download

Click the Download button to start to download and convert YouTube videos.

Import Videos into iMovie

Launch iMovie, go to File > Import > Movies…. Select the converted MP4 video then click Import.

That’s it! Now the downloaded YouTube videos will be added to your iMovie project. You can feel free to edit and enhance them.