FCE helps making better quality videos than imovie?

I have been using iMovie HD and it looks like its corrupted and cannot re-install it since I lost the disk image.
I am thinking of going to FCE over upgrading to iLife 09.
Does FCE helps making better quality videos than imovie?

Eswar M wrote:
... Does FCE helps making better quality videos than imovie?
if your source is miniDV/Standard - yes.
if your source is 720p or iFrame - no.
in terms of speed and simplicity - iM09 is 'better'.
in terms of options and feature - FCE is by far superior.
note: iM09 is no 'upgrade' of your version, but a from ground off new app.
another note: FCE has a very steem learning curve, but after managing that is a fantastic tool!

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Does the older external iSight Web Cam produce better quality video than the built-in iSight in current computers or is it about the same?

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http://www.apple.com/support/isight
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISight
http://reviews.cnet.com/webcams/apple-isight/4505-6502_7-31297839.html

FCE export quality worse than iMovie with same settings

Hi, I'm having real problems exporting video from FCE. If I import an HD clip from my Panasonic sd200 into iMovie and export it as a .mov and do exactly the same in FCE using the same export settings, the quality of the exported movie from FCE is much worse than the same from iMovie. I have been struggling with this problem for months and cannot seem to get any sort of decent quality export from FCE (using H264) and spent hours trying different settings.
Also, the colours in the exported videos from iMovie and FCE are less saturated and look really bland next to the same clip in FCE canvas.
Please can anyone help? Even the guys in the Apple shop could not figure this one out.

Sorry the camera is actually a Panasonic HS200.
The native format is .MTS and films in 1920x1080 50i. Imported via iMovie as a .MOV which gives the same quality footage as if I imported via Log and Transfer.
I will expand on the problem I am experiencing. When I export from FCE4 using "QuickTime conversion" I use the following settings:
Codec: h.264 Key Frames: every 25
Frame rate: 25fps Frame Reordering: on
Data Rate Restricted to: 10mbps
Optimised for: Download
Quality: High Encoding: Best quality (multi-pass)
Dimensions: 1920x1080
Deinterlace Source Video: ticked
When the deinterlacing is ticked, the final exported video appears ghosted, with two of the same images projected side by side rather than one on top of the other, creating a very bad image. However when deinterlacing is not ticked the final exported video ends up with horizontal lines across the entire image. This is seen even more clearly when not in full screen.
When I export from iMovie 09, using Share>Export using QuickTime using the same settings as in FCE4 (deinterlacing ticked) the footage is very clear and there is no noticeable ghosting or horizontal lines.
When I export footage from FCE the video also end up desaturated and washed out, with low contrast. The same happens when I export from iMovie, but to an even greater extent!
My 'Easy Setup' for FCE4 is:
Format: Apple intermediate Codec Rate: 25fps
Use: AVCHD- Apple Intermediate Codec 1920x1080i50
These are the problems I experience; described above.
I do no know whether the problem is something to do with my export settings; settings in FCE; or whether FCE exaggerates the quality of my images (which i highly doubt); or if it is because FCE4 is now around 4 years old, and iMovie is from 2009, and therefore has more advanced settings for AVCHD?
I am by no means a professional when it comes to talking video jargon.
Any help is truly appreciated as i have completed over 150 test exports in FCE and the Final Cut experts at the Apple store spent almost 2 hours trying to work something about, but could not think of anything!
Thanks in advance.

IDVD08 lower quality video than iDVD06

I'm not a pro video guy, so I really relied on the "simple" Mac apps and associated iLife (mainly '06). There were MANY changes from iMovie/iDVD '06 to '08 and maybe I'm missing something.
With a recent import of DV tape into iMovie '08 and sharing it with iDVD, my wife and I immediately noticed lower quality video in the films (let alone the lack of chapters, sigh). Reading these (and other) forums, I found the iMovie '06 download and proceeded to use it for another movie and sent it to iDVD '08.
Using the same quality (professional -- I don't mind the lengthy time), the output DVD was definitely better looking than the previous work flow (iMovie 08, share, iDVD 08).
Has anyone else seen/noticed this?

Hi Andre
There is another aspect too.
If You add photos to Your movie and use "Share/Export to iDVD" from versions up to iMovie 6
then You'll probably get a lousy result what ever coding scheme.
If You done this and let iMovie render - two problems occures:
• iDVD performs badly
• Your original iMovie movie is harmed and You need to re-import Your photos and re-do the edit.
Then close down iMovie. Drop the movie icon (with a Star on it) into the theme window in iDVD.
Now iDVD will do the rendering and so much better.
Most probably this goes for iM08 and iDVD08 too.
Ps. I used Pro Quality on a small project and got a very good result - but may be I just was lucky Ds
Yours Bengt W

Poor quality video after imovie imports it

I have reasonably good quality video (Video DivX 6.0, 640x480, 29.97 fps, Audio: uLaw 2:1, Mono, 8000 Hz) ) which when viewed on my imac in QT looks good. I then import into imovieHD and the quality reduces (lower res and flatter contrast).
The problem seems to be the conversion to DV because if I use toast to do this same conversion I get the same loss in quality (I needed to do this to get movieds into imovie08)
So my question is, given that imovie seems to only use DV (converting all other formats), how to I convert my videos to DV without quality loss (I have all the usual 10.5 software and also TOAST)
Hope somone can help, been banging my head against this for a while now.

At it's heart, iMovie is a DV editing application. When you look at the big picture there are two fundamental video files: those that are meant to be edited and those that are meant to be distributed (youtube, DVD etc). You have a "distributed" file that you wish to edit. This simply means there will always be obstacles and loss of quality. As example, a DV file = 13GB/hour. This is compressed for distribution (commonly using iDVD to create a DVD which only holds 4.3GB). The more compressed the file is, the more quality is going to suffer.
Your file is very compressed and I think you are barking up the wrong tree. What is it you want to do with your file inside of iMovie? I believe there are Divx editing applications out there that will perform simply cuts- but I think they are Windows only. I didn't see anything that would do more than simple cuts, probably because all the individual frame information is gone via compression (which is why iMovie wants an individual frame format).
I may have an MP3 a friend gives me of a orchestra performance. The original recording took place in a studio, mastered via a huge 48-track console. I may want to go back and extract just the trumpet- easy enough with the source material- but not something that can be realistically done with a very compressed MP3.
Mike

TS3634 Help, how to importing video in iMovie'11

I am using the Sony Handycam HDR-HC 9
OS X 10.8.4, MacBoo Pro early 2011
iMovie'11
I want to import the video shot with the Handycam into iMovie. The cable I am using is iLink to FireWire 800.
When I put the camera mode in to edit/play and I plug in the cable I excpected to be able to import the HDV into the iMovie.
It does not work, and I must say not any more.
About 6 months ago I did import video from the same camera to the sam iMovie Aplication on the same MacBook Pro
I could chose the import from and select the Handi cam etc. and I cpuld control from iMovie the handycam.
Recvently I wanted to import clips from the camera to my computer again and I was unableto do so.
In the iMovie app. I am unable to select the camera, in the view finder of the camera it only shows HDV in when I plug in the iLink cable.
The omly thing that has changed in the last 7 months since i last imported movie clips is OSX updates and iLive updates.
could this be the reason?
If so how can I correct this and import clips again from the camera.
Will realy appreciated if anybody can help me solve this problem.
Thank you.

Ok
I tried that but no go.
In the handy cam viewer as soon as I plug in the cabe it shows HDV out iLink and immediatly changes to HDV in iLink. I assume that the cable is right than.
I have no possiblety jet to check the cable but it is only 6 months old and not used much.
The port on the MacBook pro is ok I used a firewire 800 external drive and it shows up an I can browse the disk.
Regards

Better quality: .mov or .wmv?

I just recently got a job editing videos for my school and I'm using Final Cut Pro. Of course all the videos I've made for work are in .mov formats. But recently my boss asked me to convert the file to a .wmv format for him, for what reason I have no idea.
But never the less, he wants it in .wmv format. And after trying over and over again to convert the file into .wmv format without losing the quality (which I've found is extremely difficult), I started to wonder; is one format actually better quality than the other?
Is .mov better quality video than a .wmv? Or are both equally balanced video formats?

If you have to convert to wmv, then Flip4Mac Studio is gonna be the basic first step to that. Depending on the budget of your school, Episode is their upper grade encoder.
As for quality, I will suggest you contact the moderator at the F4M forum, HERE. He has a wealth of knowledge for this subject, since I think it's his business to encode daily for clients.

Is there a better external drive than the one Apple offers?

Hello all,
I've got the 15" Macbook Pro with Retina display, and of course I don't have a disc drive, was just wondering if there was a better quality drive than the one Apple offers? I will be using this drive to burn audio onto CDs if that helps (I DJ)
***Sidenote: I have no problem with paying for or using the Apple one, I just didn't want to get it to then find out that another brands' drive does the same or a better job for less money
Thank you all in advance,
Ryan Huff

I actually have been reading some stuff online and came here after mixed reviews, I guess it's a very subjective topic,
Like I said I've got no problems with the apple one, thank you for your help!

Can apple put an update for ipod 6th generation so that it gives better quality sound?

I have an ipod 6th generation and i have heard a lot about apple's popular white earphones. The problem is that my ipod don't give enough volume to enjoy music from those white earphones. Can apple bring something new in their updates to fix this issue???
HELP !!!

You must realize that the quality of sound has been compromised by the very fact of compression and equipment. You are never likely to experience the nature of a live event by listening on an iPod. The best solution is to get a better quality of earbuds/ earphones/ headphones to improve the playback experience. The higher quality headphones such as Bose, Sennheiser, Sony have capabilities to counter ambient interference ( Bose noise-cancelling for example), and they have a better quality speaker than the Apple earbuds. This standard issue bit of kit is more of a courtesy to iPod buyers so that they will have something right out of the box in order to listen to their music but they are not the highest audio quality. The best audio quality will cost every bit as much as, or even more than, the cost of an iPod. As for turning up the volume, that is a foolish undertaking that can have long-term consequences on your hearing. Tinnitus cannot be cured! You will live with it unto your last days.

Is there a way to import my STD quality video without converting it with another program?

I understand how to import the HD quality video through imovie, but cannot seem to import the STD quality video without first converting it through another program? Anyone know how to do it without the cumbersome converting process? Thanks.

What kind of camcorder did you use to shoot the video?
If you aren't sure, will the STD quality video play in QuickTime Player? If so, click Command-I to open the Inspector and tell us everything listed by the word FORMAT: as well as the dimensions of the clip. (Instead of Command-I you could alternatively click WINDOW/INSPECTOR.)

DVD looks different/better than imovie

I did a quick search in this forum to see if this has been discussed before. I'm sorry if it has; I'm new in this forum. Anyways...
I'm trying to edit video that I dumped from a video camera and DVD onto my powerbook g4 1.33ghz w/1.25ghz ram. I'm not having any real issues with the editing process itself. My problem is that, when I burn a DVD of the movie (using iDVD) it looks entirely different than on the laptop. I've even tried using a secondary screen to do the editing on (regular computer monitor). The secondary computer monitor looks the same as the laptop. But, again the burned DVD looks totally different. On the computer, it looks kinda like it's in dropframe but I'm using 29 (or whatever that higher setting is). But when I burn the DVD and play it in a regular DVD player, it looks much crisper, smoother and less pixelated. Will it help if I max out my laptop RAM to 2ghz or is this just a problem inherent in the preinstalled 64MB video card? If it's the video card, I'm thinking about upgrading to a macbook. Will a macbook video card be powerful enough not to have this problem? Any help/suggestions would greatly be appreciated.

bobwex123 wrote:
I use DV tape (not HD), import to iMovie 09 and burn to DVD with iDVD....
... If I upgrade in FCE and spend some time with the interface, will the final DVD quality be better than iMovie 09?
definitively YES.
as widely known, iM08/09 has this little *skip-field problem* with interlaced sources (miniDV imports are always i, independently, what camcorder marketing says), plus a gamma-prob.
details on our website:
http://sites.google.com/site/theimovieoutputproject/
you avoid these probs by using a 'real' dv-editor, as iMHD6 or FCE ..
sidenote: settings in the editor, on transfer and iDVD have to be correct for best quality. as: sequence settings 'fit' to camcorder, NO 'Export using QT conversion', iDVD is set to same standard as camcorder (PAL vs NTSC); project length <60min (=for highest bitrate in iDVD).
+disclaimer: I may profit from linking to my site.+

FCE export settings for higher quality video

Hello. I'm a self-schooled newspaper video features producer and relative newcomer to Final Cut Express, shifting from Premium Elements. I've just begun using it to upload videos to my newspaper's finicky web system, which will only accept .flv files of a certain size. My modus operandi has been to export my videos as large .avi files, using Quicktime conversion and DV/DVCPRO/NTSC, with medium quality, with 16 bit sound set at 32 Khz. Then I run that .avi through the Adobe Flash Media Encoder with a frame rate of 15 fps, deinterlacing and resizing the screen to 640 by 480. This procedure (outlined by our former video editor) produces serviceable web quality video (You can see video that results from using these settings at http://wvgazette.com/multimedia). So, two questions: 1) I have created an 8-minute FCE music video for my band and wish to export it at a higher quality (for use on Vimeo) than these newspaper settings. Which of them do I change so that a higher quality video results without waiting all night for a massive file to upload? 2) And wthere might I turn for guidance on better understanding the Sanskrit of FCE video export settings for newbies? Thanks for any help.
Douglas Eye
http://hundredmountain.com

The simplest way to produce good quality video for the internet is:-
1. File>Export Using QT Conversion.
2. The "Format" window should say, "QT Movie".
3. In "Use" select "LAN/Intranet" from the dropdown menu.
4. Click "Save" and when it has finished encoding, upload it.
Do not mess about altering audio settings, frame rates etc.
Using the above settings an 8 minute video would be encoded in around 20 minutes (depending on computer speed) and would be well under 100MB.
Is that too big?
Message was edited by: Ian R. Brown

Tiff or JPEG better quality in iMovie?

Which format gives better quality in iMovie...TIFFs or JPEGs or does it not make a difference?

Thanks for learning, Sue!
QuickTime Pro image format imports are a different Apple than images used in DV editor such as iMovie.
Did you know, assuming you have a very fast Mac or PC, that you can import nearly every major image file format via QuickTime? How about 60 fps screen grabs in .pdf or .png or video formats?
You could, in elementary theory, assemble an HD image sequence?
QuickTime Pro has so much power and it is the basis for such "i"Apps as iMovie, iPhoto, iTunes, and the higher end "Pro" apps like Final Cut and Logic Pro.
Apps like Apple "Preview" (an image viewing application) are also built on the core foundation of QuickTime.
PC users still get "Picture Viewer" when they install QuickTime? It is Mac's Preview app now.
QuickTime.
It is so deep into the Mac OS it would be impossible to separate it from the OS.
QuickTime helped develop our Mac "eye candy" experience.
It also helped developers understand the rules. And game developers create such rich graphics.
Even HD TV owes a bit of gratitude to the software engineers behind it.

IMovie and iDVD help with low quality

I am working on a large project that consists of 480 still photos that will be set to music with motion, etc that is 1.3GB total. When I import them into iMovie the project quickly becomes 15GB+. I then exported it full quality to iDVD which compressed it to around 2.5GB. My issue is that the quality is bad...wavy type pictures, etc. Is this because I have too many pictures and the project is too big? What should my settings in iMovie be to get the best quality project. The photos are high quality shot with a digital SLR and look great by themselves so I know it's not the pictures themselves. Any help and advice would be greatly appreciated!!

There are a heap of threads on how to improve the quality of your photo's from iMovie to iDVD. Any reason you are using iMovie for a slideshow? Do you have video in the project as well? I say this because iMovie is essentially a video editing tool, rather than a slideshow application. I use either iPhoto, FotoMagico or iDVD direct to make my slideshows. ALL much better quality than from iMovie.
My first project was a still photo slideshow made in iMovie and I was really disappointed with the end product (pretty much as you described it). It was recommended to me to try a couple of things.
1. Import your photo's with KB turned on (although this seemed to make my photos worse - it seems to work for some).
2. DON'T EXPORT or SHARE your iMovie with iDVD. Rather, save it and close iMovie. Then open your iDVD project and your finder where you will find your project listed in the movie folder. Drag it's virtual icon and drop it onto your iDVD menu. I found this worked particularly well for me. If you DO export or share with iDVD make sure you don't allow it to re-render things (it asks permission). That also may make a difference.
3. When you eventually go to burn your disc, save it as a disk image (the option just under the burn button in iDVD). Once it is saved to disk (this will take a while to render, so perhaps do it over night) then you can view it in your DVD player and if all is ok, burn it through Disk Utility or Toast at a speed of 1x or 2x.
Hope these ideas provide some help.

Is m4v better quality than a remuxed MKV file via Subler?

I'm slowly building my home media server and putting my Blu-Ray's onto it. I normally do a Handbrake conversion for ATV3, so the MKV files end up being significantly smaller m4v's and the quality is outstanding. But I recently learned about the quick remux method using Subler, which quickly converts the MKV container into an m4v container without any quality loss and while keeping the same size file. But I noticed that, say, a 29GB MKV file is a much poorer softer picture on my plasma TV than the same movie that's only a 9GB MKV file (remuxed to m4v with subler for streaming over ATV3). I'm running a 300mbps cable modem so the streaming shouldn't be a problem over my home wifi. But I also noticed that the smaller m4v's (say a 3.5GB file that comes from a 9GB MKV file via Handbrake) seem to be slightly better quality than the 9GB file that was remuxed. So it seems like the larger file should be even higher quality -- but I'm getting better results with a smaller file that's Handbrake'd from MKV to m4v.
Is there some sort of streaming setting on the ATV3 that needs to be set or adjusted that will allow the full gorgeous pic quality of a 29GB file to stream right through to it, and look better than the Handbrake'd m4v file? It feels like there's a bottleneck somewhere that's not letting all of the complete picture information through, and an intact, perfect 29GB file should look light years better than that 29GB file Handbrake'd down to 4GB. Trying to figure this out before I continue down this home media server path cuz it's a lot of work to do these Blu's one at a time.
Kirby

I have no experience of the remuxing you describe, but interesting observations.
There is nothing you can adjust on AppleTV - it will either play the encoded movie or it won't.
AppleTv's generally playback the h264 codec (in an m4v container) - there are many many versions/levels of this codec and each generation of AppleTv has been able to play slightly more sophisticated versions.
I suspect but cannot prove that the issue you notice is due to AppleTV attempting to support advanced h264 features but making compromises which affect playback quality - in other words it is cutting corners to playback advanced h264 profile features rather than refusing. Handbrake on the other hand has time at its disposal - it has been refined over many years by dedicated enthusiasts so if a simple remux is all that's required i'd be surprised they have not implemented that. Instead I suspect it more accurately processes enhanced h264 features before transcoding into a new smaller m4v file. Equally there might be settings in HB which artificially sharpen or otherwise alter the video which you prefer. I'd compare the BluRay tothe remuxed or HB versions to attempt to decide which was more faithful to the original but even then it would be dependent on the BluRay player's settings in some cases.

FCE helps making better quality videos than imovie?

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