iMovie cannot load Sony-MPEG videos

I recently moved from Windows to OS X, so maybe I'm asking a frequently-asked question. But I did some googling and didn't find a solution yet.

I have a lot of videos on my drive from my SONY camera. The format is MPEG-2 Sony, which is not a standard MPEG-2 format.

How can I use these videos and import them on iMovie? Could QuickTime MPEG-2 Playback Component for Mac OS X help me? Or what else could I do?

Thanks everybody!

Playing MPEG-2 videos in Quicktime

Perian massively extends the amount of formats Quicktime can play. It's free.

Importing MPEG-2 in iMovie

I'm not aware of any solution to that. But Handbrake can help you convert that video to a format that works with iMovie (.avi).

if perian doesn't work, you can convert the files with mpeg streamclip and convert the files to quicktime dv or other flavors. just google mpeg streamclip, it`s free