Image quality in iMovie 11

I'm working on a personal documentary with 16mm footage (it's been de-interlaced) , but because I have a non OpenCL iMac I'm relegated to using iMovie 11 for the time being for budget reasons. I will also upconvert my 16mm film footage to HD so I can take advantage of the higher rez for all the stills I will be using in this documentary. What is the story on iMovie 11 image quality? I understand that FCP X has many more features, but would any given moment in my documentary look the same as FCP X, or does iMovie just not look as good.

It sounds like the hard disk space could be the culprit.
I would recommend you get an external drive. You need to move some of your events to the external drive to free up space. This must be done within iMovie. Let us know if you need help with this. (or search the discussions for how to move events)

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Image quality in iMovie

Hi guys,
I am trying to use iMovie to put together a slide show (I am a wildlife photographer) and it seems great for the job
There are a couple of bugs within iMovie itself but mostly no big deal, except for one that is bugging me.
The images I have generated are perfect quality when viewed in Adobe Lightroom, iPhoto or any other app, but in iMovie there appear to be far fewer colours so that (for example) the sky in an image is heavily pixelated. I can only guess there are fewer colours in the image.
I am confused because in one of the articles I read it claimed that iMovie was directly accessing the file on disk.
I simply dragged and dropped the hi-res images (they are all between 5 and 15 meg size) into iMovie.
Has anyone else come across this? How can I make the images in iMovie look proper so that I can export the

Are our events all co-mingled? Since ownership is ignored I assume we can see each other's video clips? This seems pretty messy to me and prevents any sort of privacy. In fact this basically breaks the whole user model.
Since still images are not stored as an event in iMovie '08, adding an image from iPhoto, your desktop, etc. adds a copy of the file to you project to serve as the "source" for later export of your project. In addition, since there is a maximum size associated with your project, this "stored" image may be scaled if the original height is greater than 1080 pixels. Therefore, my recommendation was to actually look at the "stored, scaled" file in your project so as to compare it with your original files to see there there was any loss in image quality. You can manually open the project "package" using the "contextual" menu option "Show Package Contents" at the Finder level.
I opened it in iMovie but can't see that option nor an option for setting colours to millions (which would probably solve my problem).
The ideal here is to open the file stored in your project and look at it in the QT Player for comparison with the original file. When I said "color depth should be millions," I was referring to the color depth you should find in the inspector window when you open the files in the QT player. Both should normally read "millions" unless you saved them otherwise.

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

Poor image quality using iMovie 8 or iDVD after importing DV file via FW

Hello,
i am a complete newby and asking for help. I have bought a Panasonic NV-GS320EG-S miniDV Camcorder. First i connected it via S-Video to my Pioneer Plasma which worked fine.
I have connected the camcorder via Firewire to my iMac 20/2,4 GHz, camcorder will launch import window, streaming works but in iMovie the image quality is already rather poor. I can cut files and all but after using Import film and burning it with latest Toast, picture quality is even worse, that means colors are natural but no sharpness, lots of shivering lines as soon as the angle is moving.
I've tried to import directly into iDVD with the direct transfer function for Firewire which works technically as well but the result is mainly the same, when i burn the DVD the picture quality gets far worse than via S-Video connection.
Last thing i tried is importing to iMovie, importing for media browser and reopening file in iDVD which burns the DVD later, all that works technically fine, but the image result remains absolutely poor, my wife meant inacceptable...
Any ideas what that could be??? I've always imported and exported the film with the largest picture mode possible...

I am using the Panasonic HDC-SD5 camcorder which records in AVCHD.
I also have a JVC miniDV camcorder.
The following is available in iMovie 08 help:If the larger sizes are not available, the original project media isn’t large enough to render in that size. The largest media size used in the project determines the final movie sizes you can render.
Tiny: Always 176 by 144 pixels.
Mobile: Always 480 by 272 pixels.
Medium: Varies in size from 640 by 480 pixels (standard aspect ratio) to 640 by 360 pixels (widescreen), depending on the size of the media in your project.
Large: Always 960 by 540 pixels (widescreen). No large size is rendered if your original video isn’t high definition (HD).

Image quality using iMovie 08 vs Final Cut Pro

I read in November's Macworld that if I use a tapeless camcorder, "you won't get the best image quality if you use iMovie '08 because the software converts each movie clip to smaller, more manageable size. To get the highest quality you'll need to be running Final Cut Pro on a Mac Pro with at least 2GB of RAM." Do you all agree with this? And if so, please consider the following. I used a mini DV camcorder to transfer all my tapes to my computer and to an external hard drive. Have I already lost that image quality in doing so using iMovie? If so, can Final Cut Pro import from iMovie and improve that quality by decompressing or will I need to retransfer the tapes using Final Cut Pro or will the difference be too negligible to be noticed and not to bother. Thanks, SWestD

I read in November's Macworld that if I use a tapeless camcorder, "you won't get the best image quality if you use iMovie '08 because the software converts each movie clip to smaller, more manageable size. To get the highest quality you'll need to be running Final Cut Pro on a Mac Pro with at least 2GB of RAM." Do you all agree with this?
It depends on the format. In general, the consumer tapeless cameras shoot some highly compressed variant of the mpeg2 or mpeg4 format (delivery formats). These formats are not designed to be edited but rather to be displayed directly from the camera to the TV. In order to edit the material, you must first convert the files from their delivery format to something editiable. This conversion usually results in LARGER not smaller files. There is the potential for some minimal alteration of the image in the transcoding process. This is the trade-off for shooting with such a compressed format.
And if so, please consider the following. I used a mini DV camcorder to transfer all my tapes to my computer and to an external hard drive. Have I already lost that image quality in doing so using iMovie?
No, capturing DV material from tapes using iMovie is a direct digital transfer. DV/NTSC or DV/PAL video as captured from tape is the muxed (mixed audio and video) DV stream. It is an exact replica of what is on the tape.
If so, can Final Cut Pro import from iMovie and improve that quality by decompressing or will I need to retransfer the tapes using Final Cut Pro or will the difference be too negligible to be noticed and not to bother.
FCE and FCP capture material from tapes slightly differently than iMovie. While iMovie brings the material from the tape unaltered, FCE/FCP uses Quicktime during capture to pull the audio and video into separate streams with in the resulting file. By having the audio demuxed, the programs are able to edit multiple video streams simultaneously while iMovie is limited on one at a time. The video quality is not altered in this demuxing process.
If you choose to shoot with a tapeless camera and edit the material in FCE or FCP, FCP has a wider range of formats that can be handled by the program, but in no way will it deal with them all. Many still need to be converted into an edit friendly format before you bring them into the program.
x

Re: Sudden loss of project image quality in iMovie 11

Hi
I'm an anxious technophobe looking for answers...
The image quality of my iMovie project suddenly went from crisp, to blurry and made the black areas in the film grey and pixilated/blocky (or is it considered 'noise'?). It had been perfectly fine before. The footage was shot on a 2011 Sony Handicam and I'm using a 2011 MacBook Pro. I had recently installed updates, including one that supposed fixed out of synch sound problems. I had a loss of quality with another project and optimised it to "original size" (It took hours and made absolutely no difference BTW). I should also mention my hard drive has limited space at the moment and iMovie is running very slowly.
Any suggestions/ diagnosis???
I am anxious to restore the previous sharp quality I had just hours ago.
Thanks

It sounds like the hard disk space could be the culprit.
I would recommend you get an external drive. You need to move some of your events to the external drive to free up space. This must be done within iMovie. Let us know if you need help with this. (or search the discussions for how to move events)

Poor Image quality/Slideshow/iMovie to iDVD

I placed about 150 jpegs as clips in iMovie HD (v.5.0.2). I made them all 3.25 seconds long and gave them all a short overlap transition. I set them to music and exported to iDVD (v.5.0.1). Once the DVD was burned, I viewed it with disappointment. Briefly, during the transitions the images are of great quality. But the actual image clips are very poor quality. I'm new to this and I find all the many options for making quicktime movies a little overwhelming. But, exporting to iDVD doesn't have any options. I thought it was supposed to maintain the quality.
What did I do wrong or what can I do right?

Karl Peterson said,
"If there are unrendered clips in the Timeline when we tell iMovie to Share (Export) a project to iDVD, iMovie will ask permission to render those clips. (Rendering converts the clips to video clips.)
These may include still photos, photos imported with the Ken Burns checkbox turned OFF. Photos imported with the Ken Burns checkbox ON are rendered by Ken Burns; iMovie won't ask to render them again.
If we grant permission to render clips, iMovie will render them with very poor quality, adding lots of "jaggies" to the photos. It's a bug.
To avoid the bug, do NOT grant permission to render when iMovie asks. Then iDVD will render them for us, which it does with good quality.
So, to avoid the bug do any ONE of these:
1. Import all photos with the Ken Burns checkbox ON.
2. If iMovie asks permission to render when exporting the project, do NOT grant permission.
3. Instead of sharing from iMovie to iDVD, drop the iMovie project into the iDVD project window.
Karl"

Image quality issues - Sony Handycam (MPEG) to iMovie / iDVD

I have read through dozens of posts but the recommendations vary widely and am hoping I can get some guidance specific to my situation. The image quality I am getting from home movies I edit in iMovie11 and burn to DVD in iDVD are far inferior to the original material.
I have a Sony DCR-TRV17. This camera is a little over 10 years old. It is a miniDV with 500 lines resolution, 680K gross pixels and uses MPEG. While not HD, the image quality is exceptional. The DVDs I used to create using my Sony Viao likewise looked fantastic. But the results I get from iMovie and iDVD are on par with VHS -- very poor, especially in low-light.
I hope the issue is just the settings when I import, edit (iMovie) and share to iDVD. I generally use the default settings, and often alternate settings don't seem to be selectable. It also sounds from other posts like iMovie sacrifices quality for reduced file size and increased simplicity? I would appreciate help with the following:
1) Please list the settings I should be adjusting from default when I a) import, b) edit in iMovie11 and c) share to iDVD and burn -- and the recommended settings for each
2) Is there a process I should be trying? Should I be creating test DVDs using different settings at each stage and then reviewing various setting combinations to find the best one?
3) I will most probably buy an HD camcorder very soon, and plan to burn to Blue Rays. I have no problem with going ahead and buying Final Cut and an external drive to burn Blue Rays. Should I just go ahead and do it and get away from iMovie / iDVD entirely. Will Final Cut solve this issue for my old miniDVs without a whole lot of hair pulling? Or will I still have to tinker with a bunch of settings or convoluted processes to get it "right." I never had to tinker with settings on my Viao. Really expected Mac software to be more user friendly…
Thanks very much for any help or advice!

On Import you could try unchecking Optimize video and choose Full Size. Your disk space however will get eaten up incredibly quickly choosing these settings as each hour of video = 40GBytes of disk space. So be forewarned about how big those files will expand as they come off the MiniDV tapes.
Another thing you will immediately see a difference in is how you move files from iMovie to iDVD. Share to iDVD while named in an intuitive way, is NOT the best way to get good quality DVDs out of iMovie. Instead you want to Share to Media Browser. Choose the Large Size setting. Then quit iMovie. Open iDVD, click the Media button, the Movies button. Find your project listed under the iMovie star icon and drag it into the iDVD project. Burn the Disc and see if you get a higher quality disk by Sharing to Media Browser instead of Share to iDVD.
If you choose a Blu-Ray burner, also get a copy of Roxio Toast. The encoding to Blu-ray that Toast provides will be top notch and prevent you from making mistakes as the recordable Blu-ray disks are more expensive than DVDs. So every mistake will be expensive.

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.

Poor Image quality in iDVD from iMovie

After creating a video in iMovie using photos, video clips, transitions, music, and Ken Burns, things look great. Everything looks fine in iMovie ('09). I then export it to iDVD to create the menus, etc. So far so good. After burning the disc, the picture quality is really horrible, especially the photos using Ken Burns. I do not know how to describe it....wavy, pixilated, something. The video used, taken using a digital camcorder is tolerable if I remember to deinterlace. What do I have to do to get these pics to look right? IF I export in iMovie using Quicktime, the resulting .MOV is fine....looks great. After exporting to iDVD, it looks awful.....Any help would be appreciated....thank you.
jrsorte

Chris,
not using any de-interlacing
Both iMovie 08 and iMovie 09 only use one field of a DV video frame. iMovie 5 and earlier used both frames. I'm not sure that using just one field makes a lot of difference when the content goes through mpg-2's heavy compression to make a DVD in iDVD.
As far a still images are concerned, the best sizes for NTSC DVDs are 720x540 pixels for standard video and 854x480 pixels for widescreen. Going to larger image sizes can actually reduce the image quality on a DVD.

Imovie slideshow image quality problems

I have created a slideshow in imove with music of a wedding my wife and I shot. For some reason the image quality is really poor. I tried going through idvd and I tried exporting it as a quicktime movie and burning it with toast but they both look crappy on the tv when we watch them. Please help because I need to get it out to the clients.
I have done this once before and I did have some problems but somehow got the quality we wanted. Any help is greatly appreciated.
Wayne Sawyer

If some slides show a lot of "jaggies" the project may have been affected by a long-standing bug in iMovie that adds jaggies to photos when you share the project with iDVD. If we grant permission for iMovie to render the images when sending the project to iDVD, it messes them up pretty badly.
If that's what happened, you'll need to re-import those images to replace the badly-rendered clips.
Lots more here:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=2105598&#2105598
Karl

IMovie 11 Slideshow image quality issue

Hi,
when I am creating a slideshow with iMovie from still images, I have a severe loss of image quality. I have tried to search forums up and down, but did not find any help or solution for that. The loss of quality is kind of dramatic. Any ideas, suggestions or solutions?
Regards
HEnnisch

Hi!
I'm loosing a lot of video quality when I transfer movie clips from my Iphone 4S to Imovie11.
Did you find an answer to your problem?
If so, maybe you could help me out?
Thanks!!

IMovie 11 loosing image quality in still pictures

I shoot RAW photos with a Nikon D300 and import everything to Aperture 3 where I organize, correct and adjust.
I use iMovie to make slide show sequences - i.e. my daughter's third year - and have found that though the image quality is perfect in Aperture and in any file that I export, there is a loss of quality when the images are brought into iMovie. It is especially apparent in areas that have shadows or are dark - like the skin on an arm that is in a shadow while the rest of the person is in the sun. The shadowed skin looks like it's been pixilated -rather than a uniform transition of colors, it's blotchy.
I have tried importing the photos from the media browser in iMovie, I have tried dragging them from Aperture, and I have tried exporting them from Aperture to a folder and then importing them from that folder into iMovie. The results are the same - loss of image quality especially in dark areas of the photos. It doesn't matter if I leave it as Fit, Crop or Ken Burns - it's as if the base image information has been degraded for some reason.
The image quality degradation is clearly evident in the viewer - so it's not a matter of what the intended output / export / share option is or will be.
I have also found that this happens if I take a video file like a *.m4v file and import it into iMovie - wicked loss of image quality.
I also find that if I shoot video with my iPhone 4, and then download that into Aperture, I get a nice and crisp movie in Aperture. But when I try and pull up that same video in iMovie 11, again there is a loss of quality. This is especially apparent if I let it do image stabilization as it enlarges the frame a bit. Given that I have a really big monitor I can pull up the same video in Aperture that was not stabilized and moved to the same scene and resize side by side for a direct comparison - clear image degradation in iMovie 11.
As with the photos for slide shows, the bright areas don't seem to be affected, or if they are it's not as apparent - it's as if some setting is trying to automatically adjust the black point. But I don't know what would do this or how to stop it. Can't find such a setting anywhere.
Given that the system is a Mac Pro 2 x 2.8 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xenon with 14GB and two 1TB drives it's not, or should not be an issue of the system being overtaxed.
Hope someone knows how to fix this.

Hi!
I'm loosing a lot of video quality when I transfer movie clips from my Iphone 4S to Imovie11.
Did you find an answer to your problem?
If so, maybe you could help me out?
Thanks!!

When I drag photos into iMovie, the image quality is degraded. Can I somehow prevent the degradation?

When I drag photos into iMovie, the image quality is degraded. Can I somehow prevent the degradation?

Hi
A very common origin to jumpy picture is
• Recorded material in one frame rate e.g. 29.97fps (NTSC) and iDVD set to do a 25fps (PAL) project - OR the other way around.
It delivers a DVD but a very bad one.
I do convert all my material to same fps as the DVD I want to do (e.g. PAL) - before any editing etc.
I use JES_Deinterlacer or Compressor to do this and the result is so much better.
JES_Deinterlacer is free on Internet and makes a Great job - Professional alternatives comes at an astronomical cost and the quality is not hardly no better.
Yours Bengt W

Controlled test shows imovie 08 import is problem with image quality

Friends,
Like many others I thought that I had noticed a quality difference between imovie 08 and imovie 06. So I did a controlled test:
I imported the same video into imovie 08 and imovie 06. I made two separate movies out of the video in 08 and two separate movies out of the video in 06. I then exported one of the 06 movies into 08 and one of the 08 movies into 06. I then burned all four movies to dvd.
The resulting burns were the following:
1. imported into 06, burned through 06
2. imported into 06, exported to 08 and burned through 08
3. imported into 08 and burned through 08
4. imported into 08, exported to 06 and burned through 06.
The result:
The movies imported into 06 were clearly superior in image quality to those imported into 08. I couldn't tell a difference between the 06 imports burned through 08 and 06. I also couldn't detect a difference between movies imported into 08 and burned in 06 and 08.
What is it about 08 import that causes quality degradation? I couldn't find any quality preferences to change.
I suppose this post isn't much different from the others along this line but I couldn't find any that did this type of controlled test.
Applecare had no idea why there was this difference.
Steve

I think I've solved my problem with a Google Search. I came across a free slide show generator
(contributions requested) that shows much higher quality slide shows than either iPhoto or Aperture 3.
You click on a folder of jpegs and it almost immediately generates thumbnails and within a few seconds
I can be viewing a full screen, tack sharp, slideshow of all of the files in the folder. Much sharper than
I'm used to seeing.
I think I'll keep the Aperture 3 and use if for the purpose it's intended for in the future. I'll also redo the
image preview files to the small size it started with and then I'll copy all of the files I'm interested in from
iPhoto into a separate folder on another disk. I'll use Aperture to catalog and to perform image manipulations
on but I won't try to use it as an iPhoto replacement. I don't think I'll be using iPhoto much as an image
viewer in the future either after I finish moving my favorite pictures to the Phoenix Slides folder.
The name of the free program is Phoenix Slides. It's free to download and try, free to keep (though I
think you'd want to pay the small amount requested) and fast. My pictures have never looked so good
before.
http://blyt.net/phxslides/
Message was edited by: Jimbo2001

Image quality in iMovie 11

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