At what point does iM 09 reputedly drop the 2nd frame of video

Question

Reading the boards it seems to be accepted that iM 09 drops every other frame of video in it's processing as opposed to iMHD 6 which is reputed to produce superior video quality.
At what point in the video processing does iM 09 skip that second frame? Is the quality lost when initially transferring the video info into the program or when the edited info is transferred to iDVD for burning?

Answer 1

iMovie 'drops' the frames of video footage that is in DV format upon export of the video, not import. All the frames are imported, but not used when iMovie is 'shared.'
That is what Steve Mullen addresses in his 'fix' to get best quality with DV footage in iMovie 9. See his comments in this thread: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1882630&tstart=0
WAAAAY down in the comments, he says:
+It makes no difference how you get DV into iM.+
+All these posts about 06 miss his point -- which is that there is NO WAY to export interlaced DV from iM09 (or 08). One field is always missing so quality is always lost.+
+Currently, for standard definition video (PAL/NTSC) iM09 will export full quality interlaced video ONLY if it is AIC. So you've got to convert DV to AIC. iM likes AIC. For example, AVCHD is always converted by iM to AIC.+
+Bottom line -- you must edit AIC because iM will not edit either DV or AVCHD.+
+The difference is that iM will automatically convert AVCHD during import. With DV you need to do it yourself. Of course, you need to do it correctly.+
+And, you must export it correctly. You cannot Share to iDVD. You must Share to QT.+