FCE import quality vs. iMovie

Is FCE capable of capturing/importing video at an improved quality level than iMovie 6?
I understand the superior editing & functionality aspects of FCE, but am trying to see if using FCE also gives you the ability to produce a higher quality video. FYI, I will be working with a bunch of MiniDV tapes.

I went to FCE because I was disappointed with the DVD final results of iMovie 06 at its best setting (at least what I think is the best). Thinking Imovie was just a poor factory add-on program I got FCE and on my initial tests with the same footage imported then exported through their respective programs, I saw great differences in the picture. Viewed back on a good Panasonic Gaoo 37 inch TV.
Smoke or fog, trees, anything with a lot of detail seemed less vibrant with iMovie.
I am open to opposition on these findings as perhaps something wasn't set right, but to date I have not been able to encode a DVD from Imovie as well as that from FCE
I suppose this is off topic since the question was of import quality, not export.
Cheers

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FCE Burn quality vs iMovie

I am looking to upgrade to FCE. One reason is the DVD quality in iMovie is so poor. My DVD's come out dark and with poor resolution. WIll FCE be better?
Thanks

I assume you're using iMovie to edit and iDVD to encode. Is this correct? If so, are you satisfied with the movie quality before it is burned to DVD? If so, your issue is with iDVD rather than iMovie, and FCE will do you no good.

Help with photo import quality in iMovie!

The resolution of the iPhoto (5.0.2) pics once dragged into iMovie (5.0.4) severly deteriorates on my iMovie project. The photos are 21 inches widecrystal clear JPEGS in iPhoto, Preview and Photoshop, except once dragged onto iMovie they look blurry and pixely. My digital camera is a Sony 7.2 (shot pixs at 5M)
Playing project footage on full screen in iMovie looks this way as well. So it is not just the import still shot on the clipboard that looks bad.
How do I fix this problem to get clear quality ?

Create your iMovie project in a high quality format (choose the highest one possible) and then the pics you import will be imported in a high quality. iMovie automatically adjusts the quality of your pics and movies based on the quality of the iMovie project you are creating.
I'm not sure what you mean by "a high quality format", hlokty. Are you referring to the iMovie Playback preference, which lets you pick one of three playback settings?
If so, note that preference does NOT affect the quality of the imported image. It has no affect on the quality of project clips like video, photos, or anything else. The preference only affects playback in iMovie itself. Low quality improves the playback smoothness. High quality improves the playback image.
If should be noted that iMovie NEVER shows us all the quality that's there, for either video or photos. That must be kept in mind when viewing photos imported to iMovie. It's important to not judge quality by what you see in iMovie. iMovie is a video editor, not a video player.
There are many Topics here discussing photo quality. To find them, search for words like "blurry" and "jaggies".
Here's one:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=2105598&#2105598
Karl

FCP Import Quality vs iMovie 06

Is there quality difference if I import mini DV using FCP or iMovie 06? Thanks

Here's an expanded version of Nick's post.
DV Stream (noted as .dv) is what the camera records. At the time of recording, the camera takes the audio & video from the separate sensors and mixes (muxes) then into a single data stream and writes that to tape. When you capture this material, it is a direct digital transfer of 1s and Zereos from the tape to your hard drive. No processing takes place on the file. iMovie works fine with these files as iMovie is designed as a simple 1 stream editor.
On the other hand, FCP must be able to edit multiple streams of audio and video. To facilitate this, FCP uses QT during capture to disentangle (demux) the audio and video into separate streams. There is no processing/degrading of visual or audio quality, just pulling the audio out of the video so that within the QT file container, each part is individually accessible. They are not separate files, just separate components within one file.
Now, when you put .dv material in a FCP timeline, the audio must be rendered every time you make an edit as the audio is mixed into the video stream. This is a royal pain.
It is good procedure to capture material with the program with which you'll edit the material.
Good luck,
x

I'm thinking of using Final Cut Pro to straighten slightly crooked footage and then re-import back to iMovie to complete the video. Does this have any impact on image quality?

I'm thinking of using Final Cut Pro to straighten slightly crooked footage and then re-import back to iMovie to complete the video. Does this have any impact on image quality?

As your rotate the image, you will begin to see black edges. So, as Tom implies, the image must be scaled up to hide those voids. If you shot 4k ad are editing in a HD timeline, no problem, lots of room to spare. If you shot 1080 and are editing in a 1080 timeline, you will run into issues at a certain point. However, if your 1080 project is going to be transcoded to 720 or ye olde DVD you won't notice any deterioration at all.

Importing avi into Imovie, i loose Quality

OK.....
I'm importing avi files from my PC to my Mac. File sizes are around 1.2 GB each. When i import them to Imovie, takes about 10 minutes to, and when the files are imported, the quality is not good. BUT! when i import these files into IDVD and place them in a menu screen on IDVD, they look great! So ? What do i need to do so when i import my .avi video files, i won't loose quality when importing them to imovie. These files are uncompressed and come from a home design software. Please post ASAP with answers i need to resolve this issue for a client of mine. Thanks everyone!
Taylor

Never judge by what you see in iMovie, the playback is bad. Always judge by what you see on a TV (via DV camera or iDVD and DVD player).

What are the best import and export settings? I'm losing lots of quality in iMovie...especially in the shadows?

I am creating timelapse videos using Quicktime pro's Image Sequence. I then save them and import them into iMovie. Problem is...when I bring them into iMovie...I lose tons of quality it seems. The shaddows get all blocky and pixelated? Then when I export the movie...it's even worse. I'm creating this footage from images taken on a Nikon D3s so the footage should be CRYSTAL clear...and IS in Quicktime Pro at the beginning...but when it's brought into iMovie it's like it gets all compressed etc. How do I create beautiful stunning footage that doesn't look compressed and pixelated? Thanks!

> You just need to use a larger file or settle for less quality
This is not always exactly true. There are many things that can affect the perceived quality. In Premiere's case:
1.) Deinterlacing: If your sources are interlaced, Premiere (by default) will deinterlace them before scaling down for web export. Premiere's deinterlacer is as bad as it gets. If you are doing a ratio >= 2:1 (such as 480i -> 240p) it is probably better to untick the "deinterlace" checkbox, as the line-pairs will be blended on output anyway because of the large scaling ratio.
2.) Soft scaling: Premiere's Bicubic resampling is not really ideal for large ratio reductions. Unfortunately, there is not much way around this without using other tools.
3.) Noise: Video noise can greatly reduce the efficiency of encoding -- and therefore, when using a set data rate, it makes lowers quality output. Premiere does have a noise reduction filter option in AME, but it is quite slow and not the most sophisticated solution. You may want to experiment with it anyway: It can potentially make low bandwidth encodes look much better.
4.) Frame rate: It seems like a basic concept, but many people forget that you can greatly increase your spatial quality by reducing the frame rate. If you can live without the motion smoothness of 30 fps, you can get much higher quality with 15 fps at the same data rate.
5.) Two-pass Encoding: Unfortunately, Premiere does not have 2-pass for FLV VP6 which, IMO, is probably the "best looking" web output. You should look at other tools like Sorenson Squeeze or On2 Flix. In these cases you'll need to export a lossless intermediary AVI file to maximize quality.

Importing clips from iMovie HD to FCE4

Hi. Have read with interest a couple of questions on this same issue, with the advice from Tom Wolsky seemingly being to not mix the two applications and just get stuck in with FCE. However, i'm finding FCE difficult to like/get to grips with. But more importantly, after attending some Apple onetoone sessions, it seems my Canon camcorder might be a little long in the tooth and there may be some tape slippage as I was getting time code errors when trying to import directly to FCE. The fix seemed to be to capture the footage via iMovie and import to FCE using 'show package contents' route. Having now though imported some footage from a second tape, I have some of the clips showing as Offline for some reason. Is the trick to import clips from IMovie as per Tom's suggested route on 9/8/08?

I import video from my camera into iMovie 4, because that is the last version of iMovie, I believe, that was capable of flushing unwanted video off the hard drive, and I can bring an entire tape into iMovie, trim it down for FCE, and then get rid of the unwanted footage. iMovie 6, like Final Cut Express, is a nondestructive editor and can't erase unwanted footage from the hard drive, and as you know, video uses up hard drive space FAST. To get rid of discarded edits, you either have to use iMovie 4 or Final Cut Pro.
iMovie is also much easier to import video into than Final Cut Express, with all the latter's complicated controls. With iMovie, you just plug in your camera, iMovie then says "Camera Connected," and you hit Play and Import. Stone simple. Also, in iMovie you can hear the audio as it comes in, and if I remember right (it's been a while since I did it in FCE), you can't hear your audio tracks as your video imports into FCE. Not a big deal, but an annoyance.
Once the video is in iMovie, then I cut and trim the video to get rid of all substandard/unwanted stuff, and then Empty Trash, which erases the unwanted video off the hard drive, saving mucho space over the course of a project. Otherwise, you're just stuck with the unwanted video, and all it does is fill up your hard drive. Then you export (or "Share," in iMovie parlance) your video from iMove as a QuickTime movie, and drop that QT movie into Final Cut Express's Browser. Then create your FCE project from it.
The only objection I have ever seen to this procedure is people complaining that their QuickTime movie from iMovie has to be rendered in FCE before FCE can use it, and this takes a bit of extra time. Well, that's true, unless you export your video from iMovie in a form that FCE can use natively. Then it doesn't need to be rendered at all--it's just as though you had imported it from the camera directly into FCE. Most people don't know how to set up iMovie to do that.
Here's how I do it: (this is iMovie 4; I assume other versions are the same), Select Share > QuickTime and choose Expert Settings. On the next screen, select Export: Movie to QuickTime Movie, and click the Options button. In the Movie Settings window that this brings up, on the upper (video) part of it, under the Video checkbox, click the Settings button there, and for Compression Type choose DV/DVCPRO-NTSC, and under Compressor Quality, move the slider to Best, and click OK. Under the Sound checkbox, click Settings, and then choose Linear PCM, Stereo, and 48.000 kHz for Sound Settings. Under Render Settings, choose Qualty: Best. Just below that, uncheck the "Prepare for Internet Streaming" box. Then click OK, and the window will go away, and you're ready to export.
Give the video a name, and a place to save to, then click SAVE. The QuickTime movie that results from this can be dropped straight into FCE and requires no rendering; it works just as though you had imported it directly into FCE from your camera.
Tom B.

FCE: Importing footage?

Okay, I know this has probably been answered plenty of times, and I've read all through the forums that people are having kind of the same problem and still no luck. Hopefully someone can give me some answers. I just but Final Cut Express 4 and I can't import the video from my camera. I have a sony dcr-dvd 308 with a firewire cable. I have tried all of the setups under "Easy Setup", I've tried importing it to imovie 08 and transferring it to FCE, etc. Seems like nothing works and I'm getting really fed up. Is there something I'm not seeing or just not doing right?
Anything will help, thanks.

Drag the original files from your camera and drop them on the Streamclip window.
To work in FCE the files need to be converted to DV - but not just any old DV.
When using Streamclip these are the settings to use :-
File>Export to QuickTime.
In the window that opens change the Compression (using the drop-down menu) to "AppleDV-PAL" or "Apple DV/DVCPRO-NTSC".
Move the Quality slider to 100% and click "Make Movie".
When it has finished the conversion import it into FCE. (File>Import>Files etc).
Or you can just drag the converted file into the Browser.
Message was edited by: Ian R. Brown

Importing Video from iMovie HD - What's the Trick?

Hello brilliant Mac Fans,
I've been working steadily to create a cool demo reel for a client using iMovie HD (6) and Keynote '08. Well, the file in iMovie is Widescreen DV, and looks great. When I export it at full quality (as a dv file,) I play it in Quicktime and everything looks dandy, but when I drag that same file into Keynote, it has the wrong aspect ratio and has skips here and there...
I guess my question is, for Widescreen video, what are the ideal settings? Does anyone know the best frame rate, kind of file, etc. that plays well with Keynote?
Thanks to all for reading...

Hello Carol,
you can create slideshows in iPhoto, iMovie and iDVD. In iPhoto you can create your slideshow in a few simple steps with music and transitions, then export it to iDVD for DVD authoring. One drawback (for me) is that you choose the duration for each picture and a transition, and these will be applied to all the pics in the slideshow, so not much room for customisation. On the other hand, if you want something quick and simple, this might be the right approach.
In iMovie you can import the pictures from your iPhoto library and create a slideshow. Here you have the possibility to completely customize all the settings (length of each pic, different transitions and music) and you can add titles and effects if you like. The process in iMovie will be longer as you'll have to import the pics one by one and change settings everytime you want a different outcome, but it will be a more personalised creation.
In iDVD you can create slideshows more or less like in iPhoto with more or less the same options. You can import your pics from the iPhoto library or from a folder and set duration and transition type and add music.
There have been several posts on this forum regarding problems with pic quality when played from DVD on TV - one problem is that pictures and video are not the same (pixels vs. lines, interlacing etc.). I personally have had the best results by importing photos into iMovie and applying a Ken Burns effect to each, but have to say that I don't work much with pictures (mostly video), so you'll probably get other sound advice from other users.
hope this helps
mish

What's the best format to import in to iMovie?

Okay, here is the situation, I have a lengthy Keynote presentation which I plan to export via QuickTime so it can be imported in to iMovie in order to do voice-overs. The question I have is what the best format is to use to export from Keynote in order to import in to iMovie. I am obviously looking for the format which is the smoothest, doesn't lose any quality, and will look clear once imported in to iMovie. Also, there is no reason to use H.264 since size during the transfer doesn't really matter to me, besides, H.264 seems to be somewhat jerky with Keynote exports (or maybe it's just my computer) as I am using some of the graphics intensive transitions and effects.
Also, I know that when you send movies directly from Keynote to iDVD or from iMovie to iDVD, it uses a format which is directly compatible and there is no conversion that takes place, is there a format which will work this way from Keynote to iMovie or does it always have to do the conversion.
Finally, the other thing you should know is that I created the presentation in Keynote using 1280x720 in order to achieve the true widescreen aspect ratio. Now, I am NOT looking to keep this in HD, once I import it in to iMovie, I only need the standard DV Widescreen resolution since I will eventually transfer it to iDVD to burn it as a widescreen DVD. So, I would also appreciate some sort of input as to whether I should export the QuickTime file out of Keynote as the full 1280x720 and then let iMovie do the down-sampling, or should I export it directly out of Keynote using the standard definition widescreen resolution? Please, I would appreciate ANY help on this!!!

Thanks for your suggestion Bruce, however I found another way as well. I finally found that using the full resolution (1280x720) with Apple Intermediate Codec @ 60FPS turns the best results (for a relatively low disk usage). I finally went with the 60 frames per second because I was having problems getting a somewhat jerky output using Current or 30FPS in any format. I realize that iDVD reduces the FPS eventually, but it seems to be perfect when I take that route. Although the jerkiness isn't noticeable on most effects and transitions, if you use the newer transitions like Reflection or Doorway, you will definitely notice a less than perfect playback.
I know that I said that file size didn't matter, but I decided using uncompressed video was just too large, I think the file size was like 25-50GB or something like that. I took forever to import in to iMovie, so I quit with that route.
I really appreciate the Garageband suggestion, that was by far the best way to go. I never really tried using the new GarageBand in iLife '06 so I didn't even realize that it had movie scoring—what a GREAT feature! I definitely should have recorded directly in to GarageBand rather than in iMovie, something is just not right with iMovie's audio handling. Anyway, thanks for the help!

Photo Quality in iMovie HD

I'm importing photos into iMovie . . . all of them look GREAT when viewed in photo or graphic applications, but when bringing them into iMovie they look distorted and blurry. When they were originally created I saved them at a high resolution to hopefully avoid problems like this. Any idea what the problem is? Thanks

I'm having a similar problem with this and I wonder if you've gotten anywhere? I've used Keynote to create builds with my text & image content for an intro to a presentation that I'm putting together in iMovie.
The resolution quality when I export from Keynote (at high quality 1280x1920) to Quicktime is variable depending on what format I set the Quicktime view at when I open the file in Quicktime. At actual size, it looks perfect. When I switch it to full screen mode, it's horrible. So perhaps my problem starts in this phase from Keynote to Quicktime?
Just to check to see, I then drag the Quicktime movie into iMovie to incorporate it into the presentation. Here, the graphics retain their quality, but the text content stays horrible.
From here, when I "share" to quicktime with all settings at highest quality, the quality is indeed the worst when opened and viewed in quicktime.
Has anybody found a remedy for this? It seems to be a common problem where there are so many places one can go wrong....

Photo image quality in iMovie

Hi ... I am attempting to create an iMovie that will include photos and video footage.
I read that the best presentation quality for the photos would be achieved creating a slideshow in iPhoto and exporting the slideshow, and importing the resulting Quicktime movie into iMovie. This would bypass issues created during the iMovie image rendoring process.
I just did a brief test run using the above steps. The image quality in the Qtime video was not very good.
Am I missing a step in here someplace?
The final show will be played on a large screen, so I am very concerned about image sharpness.
Thank you in advance.
Message was edited by: David Ris

I'm not sure what you mean by media folder, a folder of JPEG files is a media folder as is a folder of audio files.
More Info:
When dragging any folder of high quality photos to iMove it has to change it from stills to video. Apples and oranges; a conversion takes place. I just experimented by exporting iPhoto file of high resolution photos to QuickTime changed the QuickTime resolution from 640 x 480 to 1280 x 800 then imported it into iMovie. Then I exported iPhoto full resolution pictures to my desktop and then dragged them to the time line. These photos have text in the pictures. The original photos are 2581 x 1836 when I played the slide show from iMovie I could not tell the difference from the QuickTime movie that I placed in the time line and the full quality photos exported to a folder on my desktop then dragged to the same timeline as I did the QuickTime movie. However the QuickTime movie played independently in QuickTime was far superior to the QuickTime Movie played in iMovie on my computer. My monitor is set at 1680 x 1050.
Text in iMove will show Jaggies when viewed at close working range as I mentioned in an earlier post you must view iMovie at the proper viewing distance because your slides have been converted to video. Drag one of your slides to the desktop you will see that it becomes; example > Still 10.dv > in QuickTime format, no longer a JPEG file. Once you export your slide show to QuickTime you don't have the editing ease of moving your pictures position, changing slide duration, music etc.
For others to view your movies you will eventually have to burn your slide show in iDVD unless you are using your computer and a projector. An hour long iMovie can become a very large file about 10 GB but will play very nicely from a computer. Burn that movie to iDVD it will become about 1GB.
Dick

Import quality issue with AVC/H.264 and workaround

When I import from my Sanyo Xacti HD700 using "Import from Camera..." the import quality has significant blocking / compression artifacts. However, if I copy the same file off the SD card from the camera and play it back in QTplayer it does not have this same blocking / compression artifacts.
The file is a .MP4 container using H.264 codec for video and AAC for audio. The resolution is 1280x720p and framerate 30fps.
After spending a significant portion of time messing around with iMovie 08 trying to get it to import without the quality loss I have discovered that "Import from Camera..." and "Import Movies..." have different behavior (in terms of video quality) on the SAME FILE.
*To reproduce*:
1) Record a video with Sanyo Xacti HD700 camera. (One with a nice color gradient is good because it will make the compression artifacts more obvious).
2) Import the video from the camera using "Import from Camera..." (Name the event "Import from Camera" so you can remember which is which)
3) Copy the .MP4 file from the mounted drive onto your local harddrive. (Not sure if this step is actually necessary, but haven't tried without)
4) Import the video from the .MP4 on your desktop using "Import Movies..." (Name the event "Import Movies") Notice that this completes much quicker than step 2.
5) Find the two imported movies in your "iMovie Events" folder. You will notice that both movies are different sizes when you would expect them to be identical. (In my case the movie from "Import from Camera" was 47.4MB while the movie from "import movies" was 33.1MB, and the file on the SD card was 33.1 MB)
6) At this point you will also notice that the movie imported from camera will have a custom name like clip-2007-12-26 14;41;44.mov while the movie from "import movies" will have the same filename as it did on the camera i.e SANY0025.MP4.
7) Now open both files in QTplayer and arrange them side by side showing the same frame. You will see that the quality is much worse in the file from "Import from Camera".
Hypothesis:
My guess is that when you select "Import from Camera" it does some transcoding on these files that it doesn't do when you select "Import Movies". (Maybe Import from Camera always transcodes, whereas Import Movies checks to see if it needs to transcode or not?) I believe this because it takes significantly longer using the "Import from Camera" during which time it would appear to be performing some type of transformation on the movie. Also, because the file name in the folder is different.
I believe that either this transcoding is flawed or of poor quality which leads to the poor quality video when importing.
*Work around*:
Use "Import Movies..." instead of "Import from Camera..."
Note that I have not yet taken this through the export process to know how this will impact the final output.
Finally, for the skeptics, here is a screengrab of the two movies side by side in QTplayer on the same frame. The one on the left was imported with "Import from Camera" and the one on the right with "Import Movies". Look at the right side of the yellow playset and also at the hair. In motion it looks quite bad.
Thoughts?

Really? You don't see the difference?
Ok, well here is it blown up to 2X to make it more obvious:
and here it is blown up to 2X and with the contrast increased to make it even more apparent:
I perhaps didn't pick the best frame as an example, but it is very obvious in motion. If necessary I suppose I could post a small movie clip to show.
Message was edited by: Richard_

Can you help, please? Time sensitive question about import quality.

Hi,
Didn't get an answer the first time, so with a little more research on my part I discovered that:
Video clips shot with my S95 Powershot, imported automatically into iPhoto then into iMovie, are 1280x720 H.264, Linear PCM, and look fantastic. Same scene clips shot with a Canon Vixea videocam, are imported automatically into iMovie and become 960x540, Apple Intermediate Codec, Linear PCM, and look pretty bad. Is there any way to get the video camera clips to import as H.264 quality files? Is it something to do with how the still camera imports first into iPhoto, or is it just that the still camera is much better than the videocam? Sorry I'm a newbie to all of this.
The thing is, if it's the camera'a fault, I still have a week to return it and get my money back.
thanks very much!
Josh

When you have your ipod plugged in select it from the source list (on the left where the songs are). The first item should be 'launch itunes when...[you plug it in]' turn that off.
Not sure..looking at the mac version.
Good Luck,
-j

FCE import quality vs. iMovie

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