IDVD degrades quality ALOT?!?!?!

First of all, I just want to say I appreciate any help I can get on this matter, and I am honestly very sorry if this has already been discussed and answered in this forum, I am just running into some time constraints and I have a deadline of TOMORROW.... so i appreciate any advice you can give....
Okay so, I produced a 10 minute video in HD, and edited in Final Cut Express, and made it look all nice and everything, and I exported it using the quicktime export feature. And that is supposed to keep all the quality (which it did). Because when I look in finder and find the file, it says the sixe is 5.87GB, so I know it kept all of the quality, but then when i just tried to put it into iMovie, it says it only takes up like 500MB or so on the DVD, but i burned it anyway cause i figured its worth a shot, and I was right.... It looks like crap, and i dont know what to do...
Are there any other programs out there (hopefully for free) that can burn in higher quality? or is 500MB the normal size for a 10-minute HD vid??? idk... please help, thanks in advance

No. If the movie is over 60 minutes you'll need to use the HIgh Quality instead of the Best Performance. The HQ encoding does two passes, the first to determine which portions of the video can sustain the greatest amount of compression (stills, portions with minimal movement, etc.) and which needs less compression. Then it encodes into the available disk space. This is a only very elemental description of the process. The real gurus of this forum can describe it in much better detail.
There's not a lot of decision to make. You can use Professional for all projects, High Quality for all projects or Best Performance for those under 60 minutes. Some of the more advanced users believe that there's not a lot of difference between BP and HQ for projects under 60 minutes. BP just lets you pre-encode assets while working on the project. Since getting iDVD 8 I've used the Professional Quality always even though I'm using stills almost exclusively. I've only dabbled in video a little bit so can't comment much on improving it's quality. Although I did learn one valuable trick from this forum. When adding an iMovie project to an iDVD project drag the iMovie project file into the open iDVD menu instead of using the Share->Send to iDVD menu option. This lets iDVD do the encoding of the movie instead of iMovie resulting in only one encoding of the assets and improving the end quality.
Another feature I ran across with iDVD 8 is that if you add you movie to an iDVD slideshow instead of adding it to a menu the movie will be scaled to the TV Save area instead of succumbing to the TV overscan phenomena.
OT

Similar Messages

IDVD picture quality is poor

Regardless of method chosen, (professional, best or whatever the third option ius) all DVD's I create, the pictures are blurred, cannot be ceaned up, and look bad.
Meanwhile, burning pictures to a CD, are fully pixeled, mainain the original resolution and look great on a monitor or TV screen.
Why must this be?
If I can take full resolution pics from iPhoto and burn them to a CD, or for tht matter, play them as a slide show, with music, they are knock dead gorgeous.
Why would iDVD degradation, be so evident?
Documentation to this issue is so confusing or off-point, I'm now as confused as I am puzzled,
Ken

iDVD encodes media to video standeard definition which is 640 x 480 pixels for NTSC. It's always going to be less that a full sized image viewed on a Mac's high res monitor. It's not iDVD but the accepted DVD video standards that dictate that size.
How are you adding the photos to iDVD? If you're creating the slideshow in iPHoto and then sharing to iDVD that converts the iPhoto slideshow into a moive file and imports that.
I've found that creating the slideshow entirely in iDVD, using only the transitions available in iDVD and the standard "classic" theme I get the best final image quality. The downside to that is there are no alternative themes to use nor the KB effect.
If you create the slideshow in iMovie use the Share ➙ Media Browser menu option istead of the Share ➙ iDVD option. This will give you a much better quality movie exported to iDVD.
Also follow this workflow to help get the best quality final iDVD disk possible:
Once you have the project as you want it save it as a disk image via the File ➙ Save as Disk Image menu option. This will separate the encoding process from the burn process.
To check the encoding mount the disk image and launch DVD Player and play it. If it plays OK with DVD Player the encoding was good.
Then burn to disk with Disk Utility or Toast at the slowest speed available (2x-4x) to assure the best burn quality. Always use top quality media: Verbatim, Maxell or Taiyo Yuden DVD-R are the most recommended in these forums.
OT

6.01 Degraded Quality Of Files Compared To Adobe Reader

I have a wide format scanner, an HP Designjet 4200(815mfp), that can save scans in .pdf format. When I click on the properties tab of one of these .pdf's, this is the info: Application: CTX PDF Producer: PDFlib 4.0.3(Win32) PDF Version: 1.3. I am using Photoshop 6.01(6.0 with patch installed, provided by Adobe as ps601up.exe) running under Windows 2000.
When I open one of these .pdf files with Photoshop a message appears at the bottom of the screen while the file loads, "rasterizing file" as the file loads. The image that then appears on the pc's monitor is greatly degraded from the scanned image, lines and text are jagged and blurry; and even if I make no edits whatsoever and print it immediately from Photoshop the quality of the printed image is horrible, as if the resolution has vastly declined. If I open the same .pdf file with Reader, the image appears in the high quality that it ought to, and Reader prints it in high quality as well. I am definitely in Photoshop not Imageready when this happens, and it is not affected by any change I make to the resolution in the "Rasterize Generic PDF Format" box that appears whenever I first open one of these files.
Any help will be greatly appreciated, as the degraded quality of these images presented by Photoshop literally makes them unusable.

I am replying to Mr. McCahill's & Mr. Levine's posts as one, since they address similar issues. I am constrained to use Windows 2000, as that is the system used by our LAN. So newer versions of Photoshop are not an option. The computer I'm using is a 2.80 GHz Pentium 4 with over 1 gigabyte of RAM. The fixed points of my problems are the computer, operating system, and scanner(along with its software, which dictates the type of .pdf file it can generate; it can also save scans as .tif files or .cal files; for reasons that would be much too lengthy & off-topic here, .jpg is not an option even though it can save as those as well). I'm limited to software solutions, and I
don't think this PC is really a big contributor to any of my woes.

I burned my first iDVD andpicture quality is not good. Originals are excellent. My photos are shot in raw or jpeg, both are not sharp when I view my DVD. I viewed it on my 1080 dpi tv and my new apple computer.

I burned my first iDVD andpicture quality is not good. Originals are excellent. My photos are shot in raw or jpeg, both are not sharp when I view my DVD. I viewed it on my 1080 dpi tv and my new apple computer.

There are many ways to produce slide shows using iPhoto, iMovie or iDVD and some limit the number of photos you can use (iDVD has a 99 chapter (slide) limitation).
If what you want is what I want, namely to be able to use high resolution photos (even 300 dpi tiff files), to pan and zoom individual photos, use a variety of transitions, to add and edit music or commentary, place text exactly where you want it, and to end up with a DVD that looks good on both your Mac and a TV - in other words end up with and end result that does not look like an old fashioned slide show from a projector - you may be interested in how I do it. You don't have to do it my way, but the following may be food for thought!
Firstly you need proper software to assemble the photos, decide on the duration of each, the transitions you want to use, and how to pan and zoom individual photos where required, and add proper titles. For this I use Photo to Movie. You can read about what it can do on their website:
http://www.lqgraphics.com/software/phototomovie.php
(Other users here use the alternative FotoMagico: http://www.boinx.com/fotomagico/homevspro/ which you may prefer - I have no experience with it.)
Neither of these are freeware, but are worth the investment if you are going to do a lot of slide shows. Read about them in detail, then decide which one you feel is best suited to your needs.
Once you have timed and arranged and manipulated the photos to your liking in Photo to Movie, it exports the file to iMovie as a DV stream. You can add music in Photo to Movie, but I prefer doing this in iMovie where it is easier to edit. You can now further edit the slide show in iMovie just as you would a movie, including adding other video clips, then send it to iDVD 7, or Toast, for burning.
You will be pleasantly surprised at how professional the results can be!
To simply create a slide show in iDVD 7 onwards from images in iPhoto or stored in other places on your hard disk or a connected server, look here:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1089

The SOLUTION to bad iDVD Photo Quality

I have been a fairly silent member of this forum for a long time now, and have seen many supposed "solutions" with the known issue of how iDVD compresses, and ultimately destroys, image quality in DVDs. Granted, much of this compression is normal, considering a full-quality photo from iPhoto looks quite different after being smashed into the standard NTSC 720x480 format of a DVD and compressed to a variation of MPEG-2. That being said, this workaround has been well-tested, and will give you a very high quality slideshow that you can play on your TV. (take note that low quality TV will come into play in making the final product look bad, not the slideshow itself!)
NOTE: I only tested this in iPhoto 6/iDVD 6 on a 10.4.8 PowerMac G5. I would love to get confirmation it works on Intel Macs and other machines.
1. Select an album or group of pictures in iPhoto
2. Go to File > Export and click the Quicktime tab
3. You will have several options...
- Width/Height: Defaults to 640x480 (4x6 image). This will result in about 100kb per image file, which gives you over 90 pictures for a 10 MB slideshow that you can e-mail to your friends.
- Display image for: Obviously controls how long each image is displayed in the slideshow.
- Background: Can be an image or a color. This is what you will see as a border if the slideshow image is smaller than the window.
- Music: This is actually kinda complicated. What is the "currently selected music?" When you select an album and press the "Play" button to do a quick slideshow, there is a tab for Music. Whatever is selected here will be added to the slideshow when you export it.
4. Click 'Export', choose the filename and location, and then save it.
The resulting Quicktime file will be quite small, while still retaining the quality of your images. It uses a default crossdissolve transition that can't be changed. It keeps this quality when you drag the Quicktime file into iDVD and burn a disk/save a disk image.
Downsides...
- no ken burns
- can't use different transitions
- no other advanced slideshow options
But it gets the job done! If you're wondering why this works while other methods don't, it's all in the .Mov container that's created. If you open the file in Quicktime and got to Window > Show Movie Info, you will see that it lists each JPEG within the package, along with a transition component. It doesn't compress the images into a video file, but rather references the original images within the .Mov package! Cool huh?
Let me know if this works for you guys. I've offered this advice to many people with good results, which is why I'm posting it here.
smi1ey =)

Smiley,
What you suggest isn't really a SOLUTION to bad iDVD photo quality, because you aren't creating a DVD that can be played back with a DVD player.
You are simply suggesting an alternate approach for distributing slideshows which requires the receiver have a computer. iPhoto/iMovie give you several options on prepairing slideshows/movie for various methods of distribution (CD, email, etc).
Some DVD players will also play jpg files from a CD or DVD and that avoids the mpg-2 compression quality loss, but a TV set image is still a TV set image.
which gives you over 90 pictures for a 10 MB slideshow
A lot of email programs aren't happy with a file that size, and of course, since you have created a QuickTime movie, your PC friends will also need to install QuickTime. The Flip4Mac Studio application will let you convert your QuickTime movie to a WMV movie for those with PCs.
I'm glad you found an approach that you are happy with.
If you open the file in Quicktime and got to Window > Show Movie Info, you will see that it lists each JPEG within the package, along with a transition component. It doesn't compress the images into a video file, but rather references the original images within the .Mov package
BTW, there are several different CODECs that can be used in the .MOV file container - Photo JPEG is just one.
QuickTime Pro offers more saving options than the standard version, so I recommend you invest in QuickTime Pro. You will be able to create your slideshow directly in QuickTime Pro.
F Shippey

IDVD image quality v.poor

I have just bought iWork 08 for iDVD as I need the improved quality for slideshows, however the so called "professional quality" is balony! after you have set this quality level then put the dvd into your player and play it, its rubbish, the quality is worse than iDVD 06!
For a few new features this is a waste of money, no better performance in fact its worse!

For the highest quality slideshows, I use FotoMagico. It gives you an option to encode a DV file at a high quality level. When the movie file is used in iDVD, slideshow quality is improved.
See http://homepage.mac.com/prof_pixel/FotoMagico.jpg
BTW, the 'Pro Quality' encoding only make a difference if your content is over 60 minutes. Under 60 minutes, 'Best Perfotmance' give the best quality.
F Shippey

Idvd image quality problems??

Will the length of video on a dvd created with idvd affect the quality of the image? I have just created a dvd which is pretty packed 3.7 GB are used on the dvd. Most of the video looks great. However some sections later in the movie (which when shot at night were much darker anyway) are pretty pixelated. I have created a DVD with a main movie, chapter selections and an extras folder which contains a bunch of 3 minute clips. The only place I really see teh pixelated image problem is while viewing these 3 minute "extras" clips.
I am wondering if by creating a "packed" disk, the overall image quality was degraded. And, is it a general rule of thumb that you should not try and cram in as much video onto a disk as possible?
Thanks for any help.
Pete

IDVD looks a the length of things ... technically you can put two hours total video on your dvd (this includes motion menus, slideshows, music, etc) You select Best Quality to do this
And yeh, generally a longer video will affect the quality of the DVD. In general, tho, you need the "strongest" video you can get to stand up to the MPEG2 compression
DVD Studio Pro with Compressor, gives you more encoding options and you can become adept at "fudging the numbers"
But in my opinion, with iDVD, anything longer than 90 minutes total can lead you to potential probs

IPhoto album to iMovie to iDVD, poor quality of projected images

I am preparing a slide show of digital photo images. The finished product shows poor quality images. I am import the images as an album to iMovie, add a few title slides, then export either to media file or directly to iDVD. The results remain unacceptable when projected on a flat panel HD TV. Where am I going wrong?
Marks 3

If you are using the Share ➙ iDVD menu in iMovie, don't. Use the Share ➙ Media Browser menu option and then drag the movie frome the Media/Movies pane in iDVD into the projects menu window. The Share ➙ iDVD route noticibly degrades the resulting movie. What size movie are you sending to iDVD? It should be Medium or Large.
What size images in iPhoto are you using? They shoujld be cropped to the 4:3 size ratio for iDVD before adding to either iMovie or iDVD.
Have you considered creating the slideshow in iDVD by adding the album of photos via the Media/Photos pane in iDVD. I've found I get better results that way. However, there is a 99 slide limit with that workflow.
What do you mean by poor quality. When going from a photo on your monitor to a TV screen the media gets resized and compressed/encoded down to 640 x 480 which can't duplicate the high resolution of the original image viewed on the monitor.
OT

IDVD output quality

I'm trying to create a slide show with music using iDVD ver 7.1.2 running on Mac OS X ver 10.6.8 and the output quality is very poor. I'm using high quality jpg files some from Lightroom and others from Photoshop CS5. Both are highest quality when saving or exporting. I've tried all thee encoding settings in iDVD with no noticable difference. I've tried to drop the photos directly into iDVD and also tried to put them in iPhoto and export them to iDVD...nothing works for me. What am I doing wrong?

Hi
There are several layers to this
• DVD - is as Standard (whatever program used) - interlaced SD-Video - and can not be anything better than this.
• How material was created to iDVD matters
iMovie'08 to 11 - is not the tool of choise if quality is of importance - as they can not export interlaced video any way known to me - but does this by discarding every second line resulting in a sever quality loss
iMovie HD6 and FinalCut are so much better - as they can deliver 100% interlaced video over to iDVD
• How material is sent to iDVD matters
Share to iDVD - I NEVER USE as this makes iMovie any version to render (badly)
iMovie'08 to 11 - Share to Media Browser and as Large (NOT HD or other resoultion as this too degrades final quality) - forces iMovie to NOT RENDER and iDVD to do this (and so much better)
iMovie HD6 - just close it and import the movie icon into iDVD and iDVD renders.
Else my notes on DVD Quality
DVD quality
1. iDVD 08, 09 & 11 has three levels of qualities. (version 7.0.1, 7,0.4 & 7.1.1) and iDVD 6 has the two last ones
• Professional Quality
(movies + menus up to 120 min.) - BEST (but not always for short movies e.g. up to 45 minutes in total)
• Best Performances
(movies + menus less than 60 min.) - High quality on final DVD (Can be best for short movies)
• High Quality (in iDVD08 or 09) / Best Quality (in iDVD6)
(movies + menus up to 120 min.) - slightly lower quality than above
Menu can take 15 minutes or even more - I use a very simple one with no audio or animation like ”Brushed Metal” in old Themes.
About double on DL DVDs.
2. Video from
• FCE/P - Export out as full quality QuickTime.mov (not self-containing, no conversion)
• iMovie x-6 - Don't use ”Share/Export to iDVD” = destructive even to movie project and especially so
when the movie includes photos and the Ken Burns effect NOT is used. Instead just drop or import the iMovie movie project icon (with a Star on it) into iDVD theme window.
• iMovie’08 or 09 or 11 are not meant to go to iDVD. Go via Media Browser or rather use iMovie HD 6 from start.
3. I use Roxio Toast™ to make an as slow burn speed as possibly e.g. x4 or x1 (in iDVD’08 or 09 this can also be set)
This can also be done with Apple’s Disk Utilities application when burning from a DiskImage.
4. There has to be about or more than 25Gb free space on internal (start-up) hard disk. iDVD can't
use an external one as scratch disk (if it is not start-up disc). For SD-Video - if HD-material is used I guess that 4 to 5 times more would do.
5. I use Verbatim ( also recommended by many - Taiyo Yuden DVDs - I can’t get hold of it to test )
6. I use DVD-R (no +R or +/-RW) - DVD-R play’s on more and older DVD-Players
7. Keep NTSC to NTSC - or - PAL to PAL when going from iMovie to iDVD
(I use JES_Deinterlacer to keep frame per sec. same from editing to the Video-DVD result.)
8. Don’t burn more than three DVDs at a time - but let the laser cool off for a while before next batch.
iDVD quality also depends on.
• DVD is a standard in it self. It is Standard Definition Quality = Same as on old CRT-TV sets and can not
deliver anything better that this.
HD-DVD was a short-lived standard and it was only a few Toshiba DVD-players that could playback.
These DVDs could be made in DVD-Studio Pro. But they don’t playback on any other standard DVD-Player.
Blu-Ray / BD can be coded onto DVDs but limited in time to - about 20-30 minutes and then need
_ Roxio Toast™ 10 Pro incl. BD-component
_ BD disks and burner if full length movies are to be stored
_ BD-Player or PlayStation3 - to be able to playback
The BD-encoded DVDs can be play-backed IF Mac also have Roxio DVD-player tool. Not on any standard Mac or DVD-player
Full BD-disks needs a BD-player (in Mac) as they need blue-laser to be read. No red-laser can do this.
• HOW much free space is there on Your internal (start-up) hard disk. Go for approx. 25Gb.
less than 5Gb and Your result will most probably not play.
• How it was recorded - Tripod vs Handheld Camera. A stable picture will give a much higher quality
• Audio is most often more critical than picture. Bad audio and with dropouts usually results in a non-viewed movie.
• Use of Video-editor. iMovie’08 or 09 or 11 are not the tools for DVD-production. They discard every second line resulting in a close to VHS-tape quality.
iMovie 1 to HD6 and FinalCut any version delivers same quality as Camera record in = 100% to iDVD
• What kind of movie project You drop into it. MPEG4 seems to be a bad choice.
other strange formats are .avi, .wmv, .flash etc. Convert to streamingDV first
Also audio formats matters. I use only .aiff or from miniDV tape Camera 16-bit
strange formats often problematic are .avi, .wmv, audio from iTunes, .mp3 etc
Convert to .aiff first and use this in movie project
• What kind of standard - NTSC movie and NTSC DVD or PAL to PAL - no mix.
(If You need to change to do a NTSC DVD from PAL material let JES_Deinterlacer_3.2.2 do the conversion)
(Dropping a PAL movie into a NTSC iDVD project
(US) NTSC DVDs most often are playable in EU
(EU) PAL DVDs most often needs to be converted to play in US
UNLESS. They are play-backed by a Mac - then You need not to care
• What kind of DVDs You are using. I use Verbatim DVD-R (this brand AND no +R or +/-RW)
• How You encode and burn it. Two settings prior iDVD’08 or 09
Pro Quality (only in iDVD 08 & 09)
Best / High Quality (not always - most often not)
Best / High Performances (most often my choice before Pro Quality)
1. go to iDVD pref. menu and select tab far right and set burn speed to x1 (less errors = plays better) - only in iDVD 08 & 09
(x4 by some and may be even better)
2. Project info. Select Professional Encoding - only in iDVD 08 & 09.
Region codes.
iDVD - only burn Region = 0 - meaning - DVDs are playable everywhere
DVD Studio pro can set Region codes.
1 = US
2 = EU
unclemano wrote
What it turned out to be was the "quality" settings in iDVD. The total clip time was NOT over 2 hours or 4.7GB, yet iDVD created massive visual artifacts on the "professional quality" setting.
I switched the settings to "high quality" which solved the problem. According iDVD help, "high quality" determines the best bit rate for the clips you have.
I have NEVER seen iDVD do this before, especially when I was under the 2 hour and 4.7GB limits.
For anyone else, there seem to be 2 places in iDVD to set quality settings, the first is under "preferences" and the second under "project info." They do NOT seem to be linked (i.e. if you change one, the other is NOT changed). take care, Mario
TO GET IT TO WORK SLIGHTLY FASTER
• Minimum of 25Gb free space on Start-Up hard disk
• No other programs running in BackGround e.g. Energy-Saver
• Don’t let HD spin down or be turned off (in Energy-Save)
• Move hard disks that are not to be used to Trash - To be disconnected/turned off
• Goto Spotlight and set the rest of them under Integrity (not to be scanned)
• Set screen-saver to a folder without any photo - then make an active corner (up right for me) and set
pointer to this - turns on screen saver - to show that it has nothing to show
Yours Bengt W

Will importing iMovie 08 project into iMovie HD 6 degrade quality?

Hello,
Didn't find this in previous posts, so here goes...
I worked on a few projects in iMovie 08 before learning that iMovie HD 6 had better picture quality, features, etc for my needs.
I want to combine footage from iMovie 08 and iMovie HD 6 to send to iDVD to make 1 dvd movie.
Can iDVD handle footage from multiple projects in different iMovie versions, or do I need to have everything in one version of iMovie first? If I import the 08 clips into HD 6, will it degrade the picture further? I no longer have some of the miniDV tapes the footage was recorded on.
AND, if I do import 08 footage into HD 6, how do I do this to preserve the best quality I can?

Thanks.
What is the best video compression type to use for this purpose? I have it set to MPEG-4 right now, with same frame rate as original. I don't know a lot about compression types, but would DV/DVCPRO-NTSC work or be any better?
What about audio settings? It is currently set to 16 bit, 48 KHz, Linear PCM... the audio wasn't great from the source (internal camera mic), but I'd like to preserve what is there!

IDVD slideshow quality

I've read through several of the posts on slideshow quality and think I understand some of the basic problems with transferring slideshows to DVD for viewing on a TV but hoped someone might have a few additional suggestions...
I have been trying to get a nice slideshow put together with FotoMagico. I like the program features and interface (although their support leaves something to be desired). Like others, I'm just not satisfied with the results. I'm using old scanned b/w photos, scanned at 600-dpi in TIF format. I tried a variety of export settings. The Quicktime (.mov) is always very good but once iDVD does its conversions and burns the final product often its just bad.
My intention was that the slideshow have an 'old photo album' quality so I wanted to zoom up from a smaller image on black background to full screen (or vise versa) over a 10 second span. Many of these are particularly bad - lots of flicker or jitter - as well as murky detail in smaller view. Stripes, steps and bricks have become evil things to me. Even the titles on black background title pages are very murky, even at a reasonably large font - in fact the watermark that shows up on their demo version is really terrible on a DVD burned for TV. On the other hand, full screen shots of the same images that are zoomed in on a little further seem pretty good. My question is this: is there something in the conversion that is screwing up because of all the black background on the smaller view of the images?
Also a random thought... when recording a TV show to a home DVD recorder the images, though not as good as the original broadcast, are really quite good. And even small titles and text scrolling across the screen are easily read, while corresponding font sizes on my slideshows would be completely unreadable... and I do mean completely. Notwithstanding all that has been written on the forums about NTSC and television limitations, what gives?

I did get a small marginal improvement with the
DVCPRO setting. I couldn't find any gamma settings.
No, I had to batch gamma adjust my images with another program (Equlibrium's DeBabelizer although Photoshop could also have been used).
Once again, my biggest problem is with old b/w photo
scans. Certain photos are clearly worse than others.
More recent color photos appear to be much better. My
biggest problem is being fairly new at this and not
having anyone that can look at a DVD I've done and
tell me "yes, that's as good as you'll get" or "no,
something is wrong".
The best way to learn is by experimenting. You need to take a few or your problem images and try adjusting ther contrast to different levels and creating a disk image out of iDVD. Keep notes and see which images look the best.
I'm stuck in neutral trying to
find a (possibly non-existent) solution rather than
giving up and using more full screen shots, less zoom
& pan, stills, etc.
It's possible you expecitations might be too high.
Were you able to set the quality level to 'Best' in the custom settings in FotoMagico after you selected DV/DVCPRO?
Finally, back to my random thought on the TV and home
recorder, as I said television recordings of grainy,
old movies on a cheap home recorder are MUCH superior
to anything I can get with this slide show. Movement
is smooth, titles are quite readable where mine is
flickery, jerky & fuzzy. Is it actually that the big
problem is the conversion to Quicktime/.mov file. And
that although the .mov file looks fine when played
back on a computer, there is already so much loss of
image at that point, that the conversion that iDVD is
doing just is amplifying an already insurmountable
degradation of the images?
What does the quality of the DV QuickTime movie you create look like on your computer screen?
Did your FotoMagico custom setting screen look like this: http://homepage.mac.com/prof_pixel/FotoMagico.jpg

My avchd video I imported looks great on the monitor, but once I run it through iDVD the quality of video on my HD tv is much less than I had on the monitor

Hope you can help. I imported AVCHD video into final cut express 4, Ive used the broadcast safe filter, and others in the final cut color correction suite. but to no avail. When I export using quick time, and burn the DVD in best performance, the quality of the video is much less on my HD TV than on my monitor during construction.
Im looking for some insight here.
My DVD player is pretty cheap, but movies I buy are crisp and clean, my video looks blotchy and cheap.
I tried using iMovie and got the same results
Jeff

Hi Jeffrey. You're probably going to get a lot of comments as to the fact that DVD is not HD quality. It's resolution quality is much lower than actual HD and there's a lot of compression going from HD footage to standard definition of DVD. You might experiment with BluRay if you can get a BluRay burner to work with your mac or burn a BluRay project using Toast on your mac. You can search the forums for more informaiton.
I've been experiencing some of what you're describing for years. I also agree that the overall video quality going from HD to iDVD is just not as good as it's expected to be. The commercial DVDs use complex compression techniques and of course are shot with perfect lighting and equipments,
Make sure you're exporting your FCE project (not self-contained). In iDVD use professional quality unless it's a really long video. Check the iDVD forums for more informaiton about that. Good luck and I wouldn't expect any improvement from iMovie. iMovie is more targetted towards online viewing rather than DVD...

IPhoto library slideshow - to iDVD photo quality

Hi,
i'm new to Mac computers, just got my first one - and I've created a photo slide show with iPhoto and exported/burned it with iDVD with my own menu and everything and all went well, except the photo quality is AWFUL. The pictures are jagged and not as sharp as they appear in iPhoto. I checked and watched the mpeg file it created in order for it to go to iDVD, and that was great - is it the Mpeg2 encoding that is ruining the quality?
I tried creating it in iMovie and it's the same thing.

I am trying to create a project for a client. It is a slideshow with music. Seems simple??? NOPE!
I thought to use imovie and burn it to a CD, but am I crazy?
I have questions and need answers please!
-best program to make a slideshow in with about 150 CD's able to burn onto CDR with music
-have to be compatable with both mac and pc's
-and every time I am importing good quality pictures into imovie they look like crap. pixels gallore and cant seem to make it better.
freaking out a bit, have a deadline...
please help!!!!

IMovie -- iDVD terrible quality

I have a miniDVD created from an 8mm movie by a professional service - the quality is near the original. After creating a project in iMovie 11 and playing it full screen on an iMac 27, the quality is still acceptable.
Then I share it to iDVD. The result in terrible - the movie is like a zoomed presentation of an iPhone video. What am I doing wrong?

I tested both and must say that THERE IS NO Difference. I compared a specific clip captured by both and the results are exactly the same (copied from Movie inspector in QT)
The problem is not the Capture - BUT Delivery to iDVD
DVD disks is as Standard - SD-video quality (as on old TVs at it's best) AND interlaced.
Only iMovie up to HD6 and FinalCut any version delivers this.
iM'08, 09, 11 Don't - they discard every second line resulting in a less sharp result from iDVD.
Result - just raw in and out - is SAME - iMovie HD6 or FinalCut = As Good as can be when dealing
with SD-video and DVDs. (iDVD can not do HD-video on DVDs at all)
To get HD - You need Roxio Toast™ + BD-component and BD-burner/disks + BD-Player !
To get same quality as from Camera - NO - DVDs can't deliver - they are compacted into a .mpeg2 format
that has to lose quality to be able to squees in up to 2 hour video on a 4.7Gb SL DVD disk.
Best option possibly is
High Quality SD-video Camera ---> iMovie HD6 ---> BACK TO Camera ! Now the loss is near to nill.
There are NO - Back to Camera function in iM'08 or 09 or 11 - *A GREAT MISTAKE* !
Yours Bengt W

Degraded quality of photo printing book in Aperture 3

Hi,
I've isolated an issue in the print book function of Aperture 3 that drove me crazy in the last ten days:
I've created a custom size book to deliver to a local print service via "save as pdf" function, but something gone wrong because the quality of the pdf isn't good as the original photos.
After days of trials I've found where the problem rises up, so I'll try to explain step by step below:
I've identified one critical photos that well shows the problem and I've "printed to pdf" from the normal print photo function of Aperture and the results was correct:
So I've created a book and put that photo in a page and I've "print to pdf" the book. The results was degraded like you can see below (look at the dark areas that have lost every details):
I've done the same operation in iPhoto, the "non Pro" minor App, and in a paradoxical way the iPhoto results PDF was perfect!
I've also noticed that the preview image of the print dialog box of Aperture shows the defect unlike the dialog box of iPhoto:
Aperture:
iPhoto:
So finally seems that something in the print engine of books in Aperture is broken and ruins the photos "before" are printed, and apparently no setting seems to help.
I've done this tials on a MacPro Lion 10.7.5 ad Aperture 3.4.3, MacBook Pro Lion 10.7.5 ad Aperture 3.4.3 and MacPro Snow Leopard with aperture 3.1 and 3.2 always with the same results.
you can download the generated PDF here:
pdf Aperture Photo:
http://temp.paolorossi.me/ApertureImagePrint.pdf
pdf Aperture book:
http://temp.paolorossi.me/ApertureBookPrint.pdf
pdf iPhoto book:
http://temp.paolorossi.me/iPhotoBook.pdf

I've done another test:
I've created a sample image with 4 colour faded bars with values from 0 to 128 for RGB and gray then I've putted on a page in Aperture book and iPhoto book then I've printed on PDF.
Below you can see the results: iPhoto is good whereas Aperture is ruined.
iPhoto results:
Aperture results:
I've also noticed the Aperture results is influenced by the color profile chosed on the selector in the box, but no profile at all gives a good job , every profile returns a weird custom defect, also with "no profile" choice.

IDVD degrades quality ALOT?!?!?!

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