Image quality loss in iMovie

When I import photos into IMovie they instantly loose focus and quality. Is there anything I can do about this?

Lets say you have a 6 megapixel jpeg file.
When you render it in iMovie, it will be downsampled to fit the project.
For a 1920x1080 project, it will be about 2 megapixels.
For a 960x540 project (large), it will me about .5 megapixels.
For a medium project, or anything going to DVD, it will be about .3 megapixels.

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Display size query, + quality loss from iMovie originals

Learning to work the iDVD process, but what is the word on a foolproof sizing method, such that the thing will display OK on any TV? I don't see any way to restrict display size in iMovie, and what good is the TV Safe check, if you can't control the display size?? Also is quality loss inevitable? I'm compiling the DVD from separate files, less than 1 gb ea. I used "full quality" Quicktime compressed versions from the original iMovie file (which look fine in QT); then pulled those back in to iMovie, then shared to iDVD. One of the files looks fine encoded, but the other has weird sizzling-oil standing wave artifacts, even on still scenes from jpegs. Looking for help/comment/expressions of sympathy
Thanks,
John
Houston TX

Hi v
Quality of the DVD-disc depends on several things.
• Highes Quality isn't Top - better is Best Performances (up to 60 min movie)
confused naming - in iDVD'08 there is Pro Quality AND I like it.
• Media brand - I use Verbatim
• Type: DVD-R my choise no DVD+R or +/-RW
• I save a Disc-Image and burn this at an as SLOW speed as possibly (eg x1) with Toast™
(Disc Util tool can also do this)
• I DON'T USE the function Share/Export to iDVD from within iMovie - IT IS DESTRUCTIVE !!
Just drop the movie project icon (with a Star on it) into iDVD theme window - then iDVD do the
rendering and so much better. Especially if there is photos in the movie.
• Free space on internal (start-up) hard disc - should be about 25Gb when all material is imported
and structured. This for iDVD to work with - iDVD can't use an extern hard disc as scratch.
(less than 5Gb - result is most probably of no use at all)
This is what come's first to my mind.
Yours Bengt W

Huge quality loss in iMove '11

Hello fellow iMovie users.
Yesterday I upgraded to iLife 11 to get the new iMovie and its "new" audio editing capabilities. I could ofcourse just buy it from Mac App Store, but I am principally against App Store and its strict rules, so I choosed to get it the old way.
Anyway, I liked what i saw. Finally the new iMovie was about as good as the five year old one, and had some neat features like chroma key and cropping.
So I decided to start practicing and create a short video based on some old DV-videos filmed with my Canon MV950 DV-PAL camera.
I imported the footage into iMovie, and noticed some significant quality loss after the import.
And it get worse. After I exported the video, it seems like it is heavily compressed, even if I'm exporting to QuickTime and selects the highest quality possible.
I have some screenshots to show you the differences.
This is the original DV-footage.
The imported video. Notice the higher compression and the choppy edges.
And this is the exported video. Notice the insanely bad quality, especially in dark areas.
Is there any way to fix this, or do I have go back to iMovie HD?
PS. Sorry if my post is a bit unreadable. I'm from Norway.

Steve,
While I agree everyone should have owned a HD camera by now, there are a lot of low-end SD cameras that are still being sold today. In this era of our economy, consumers are sensitive to prices; especially low or lower prices.
And unlike the video camcorder boom of the 80s with Sony introducing the Video8 handycam (shoulder mounted camcorder), people today do not video using traditional camcorders. Most either do it through a digital camera, DSLR, iPhone or blogger cameras and are already mostly in an acceptable progressive format. There is nothing wrong with DV style cam. Canon GL-2 and the Panasonic DVX-100 are still commanding such a very high price tag for cameras of older technology and still being repaired goes to show that there are people out there still using it.
If one can convert quality interlaced footage into quality progressive footage, you can use that footage and create good results using iMovie 11. I agree with you and Tom that iMovie 11 captures interlaced footage in full. But what's the use if it can't make a good product in the end that looks like what iMovie 6HD can do and when there are PC software out there including the free Windows Movie Maker that can do this with no problem.
Consumers, unlike some of us, only relate to past software used and are usually benign to the fact of progressive vs interlaced. I have dealt with some mis-informed customers that they believed FULL HD only means 1080p at 60fps; anything else is not. I digress.
With Mac users, they don't necessarily follow the same upgrade frequency as PC users either. Macs generally last a lot longer between upgrades compared to a PC because they don't have to run a barage of virus/spam/anti-malware growing definition files which ultimately slow an otherwise healthy PC down. Macs do not have to worry about this.

Image Quality Loss in Captivate 7

I'm creating a webinar in Captivate 7. The project dimensions are 540x420. When I insert an image and resize it to fit the template there is a great deal of quality loss. For example, when I inserted the chart below and resized it, the chart's gridlines disappear and the text becomes very fuzzy.
If I zoom in (Ctrl +) the quality returns, as shown below.
Can I be certain when the project is published that the quality of any images I insert will return to normal? Or is there a "view high resolution" option like in Adobe InDesign that I can turn on?

No you cannot. The only way to be certain that an image will not suffer any additional quality loss is to publish the image at exactly 100% of its original dimensions. Any resizing will always result in degradation to some extent.

Quality loss in Imovie after finalizing

Having read alot about codecs and converting i'm still not able to figure out why there's quality loss after finalizing my project in Imovie. In the original .MTS files I can see, when played with the VLC player there's a little noise in the grey and dark area's but it's more then acceptable. After converting and finalizing it's a horror to watch. The weird thing is that the converted .MTS into .MOV files look better when played in Miro then in Quicktime.
What advice can you give me on reducing the noise and making sure the movie looks best when played from a DVD on flatscreen? I want to do the editing in the higest possible quality because in the future I want to burn to BluRay aswell (I know that full HD is only possible when you burn to BluRay)
Here are the details:
1. I imported the material, filmed in 25P (so I don't have to interlace) directly from my canon HF200 into Imovie. I can choose between 960X540 or original size.
2. I choose original size and receive a warning that this can cause a negative effect on the quality. So maybe the problem is caused by my old and small laptop, see specifications underneath my questions.
3. The converted mov. files in Imovie appear to have more noise then the original and after finalizing to HD 1080p the noise in the grey and black areas is almost unwatchable.
Is there anything I can do besides buy a new laptop?
Thank you for your help!
Specs Mac
Modelnaam:          MacBook
Modelaanduiding:          MacBook4,1
Processornaam:          Intel Core 2 Duo
Processorsnelheid:          2,1 GHz
Aantal processors:          1
Totaal aantal cores:          2
L2-cache:          3 MB
Geheugen:          4 GB
Bussnelheid:          800 MHz
Opstart-ROM-versie:          MB41.00C1.B00
SMC-versie (systeem):          1.31f1
Intel GMA X3100:
Chipsetmodel:          GMA X3100
Type:          GPU
Bus:          Ingebouwd
VRAM (totaal):          144 MB
Fabrikant:          Intel (0x8086)
Apparaatcode:          0x2a02
Revisiecode:          0x0003
Beeldschermen:
Kleuren-LCD:
Resolutie:          1280 x 800
Pixeldiepte:          32-bits kleur (ARGB8888)
Hoofdbeeldscherm:          Ja
Synchrone weergave:          Uit
Online:          Ja
Ingebouwd:          Ja

No worries Still your remark about the external drive is someting to take in to account, i have mine hooked on most of the time.

Still image quality loss b/t viewer and canvas?

When I import a still (I've tried jpg, tiff, etc), the image quality is perfect in the viewer, but as soon as I lay it down on the timeline it is blurred and foggy. What am I doing wrong? Please, any advice would be helpful, as this is for a job and I can't hand this in as is...

I'm sorry, I just realized someone else posted a similar quesiton. I jumped the gun.

HELP! Image quality loss

This might sound like a stupid problem, but anytime I go to copy and paste and image from one program to another (say iPhoto to Photoshop or Graphic Converter or Keynote) the image gets noticeably brighter and loses quality. Not a lot, but enough to make a definite difference (and enough for me to notice, since I'm an art historian who relies on the quality of my images for work). Using a Macbook Pro 2009, with 10.6.2 software. I've bashed my head against a number of places, but I haven't been able to figure out why. Any help?
Here's two sample screen shot images, one from Photoshop and one from Graphic Converter.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/9937906@N06/4306597667/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/9937906@N06/4307339742/

Well for a start, there is no copy and paste between iphoto and any other application. I have no idea what you're pulling out of iPhoto on a copy and paste.
For working with an external editor - Photoshop or Graphic Converter:
You can set Photoshop (or any image editor) as an external editor in iPhoto. (Preferences -> General -> Edit Photo: Choose from the Drop Down Menu.) This way, when you double click a pic to edit in iPhoto it will open automatically in Photoshop or your Image Editor, and when you save it it's sent back to iPhoto automatically. This is the only way that edits made in another application will be displayed in iPhoto.
To use a photo in Keynote you access the Library via the Media Browser or any of these:
There are many, many ways to access your files in iPhoto:
*For Users of 10.5 and later*
You can use any Open / Attach / Browse dialogue. On the left there's a Media heading, your pics can be accessed there. Command-Click for selecting multiple pics.
Uploaded with plasq's Skitch!
(Note the above illustration is not a Finder Window. It's the dialogue you get when you go File -> Open)
You can access the Library from the New Message Window in Mail:
Uploaded with plasq's Skitch!
*For users of 10.4 and later* ...
Many internet sites such as Flickr and SmugMug have plug-ins for accessing the iPhoto Library. If the site you want to use doesn’t then some, one or any of these will also work:
To upload to a site that does not have an iPhoto Export Plug-in the recommended way is to Select the Pic in the iPhoto Window and go File -> Export and export the pic to the desktop, then upload from there. After the upload you can trash the pic on the desktop. It's only a copy and your original is safe in iPhoto.
This is also true for emailing with Web-based services. However, if you're using Gmail you can use iPhoto2GMail
If you use Apple's Mail, Entourage, AOL or Eudora you can email from within iPhoto.
If you use a Cocoa-based Browser such as Safari, you can drag the pics from the iPhoto Window to the Attach window in the browser.
*If you want to access the files with iPhoto not running*:
For users of 10.6 and later:
You can download a free Services component from MacOSXAutomation which will give you access to the iPhoto Library from your Services Menu. Using the Services Preference Pane you can even create a keyboard shortcut for it.
For Users of 10.4 and later:
Create a Media Browser using Automator (takes about 10 seconds) or use this free utility Karelia iMedia Browser
Other options include:
1. *Drag and Drop*: Drag a photo from the iPhoto Window to the desktop, there iPhoto will make a full-sized copy of the pic.
2. *File -> Export*: Select the files in the iPhoto Window and go File -> Export. The dialogue will give you various options, including altering the format, naming the files and changing the size. Again, producing a copy.
3. *Show File*: Right- (or Control-) Click on a pic and in the resulting dialogue choose 'Show File'. A Finder window will pop open with the file already selected.
Regards
TD

Image Quality loss when exporting to compressor's MPEG-2

Hello peeps.
My issue is that once I've finished my ridiculous 1 hr (anaorphic) edit with FCP I wish to put it onto DVD (4.7GB) and have choosen 90min best etc on compressor but when I come to view the footage again from the newly created file it looks like someone's gone to it with a knife around the edges.
Does all the footage need to be de-interlaced? Surely not.
It seems to mostly effect any movement within the screen.
Yet as a quicktime file it looks fine but that happens to be over 10GB and thus will not fit onto a normal DVD.

What are you viewing it on...the computer monitor? Are you simply opening the M2V file and playing it on the computer? If it's interlaced material, you're probably seeing the jaggies that can happen when a progressive display is showing a raw interlaced image without deinterlacing it for playback like some programs do automatically. If this is so, burn your DVD and watch it on a TV or NTSC/PAL Monitor, and check to see if it's still funky. Chances are it will be fine, otherwise, you may have something going on with incorrect field rendering somewhere along the line.

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)

Image quality of movie transferred from VHS

I’ve recently begun using EyeTV 200 to transfer old VHS home movies to DVD using iMove and iDVD. The movies look OK on my monitor, but on the burned dvd, they don’t look as good – especially during quick pans (this is especially a concern for another movie I am working on as the camera was manned by a friend who had no reservations about whipping the camera around from scene to scene). I realize that I can expect some image quality loss due to the compression (and also due to the fact that the VHS tapes aren’t that great in quality to begin with), but I was wondering if there were other ways to improve the image quality through settings in iMovie or iDVD. Also, I am getting iLife ’06 this weekend. Are there any improvements in the compression in that version?
Thanks,
George

Hi, George,
I don't use Eye TV, but I have copied many hours of old VHS family movie tapes onto DV tapes using my camcorder.
I was surprisingly pleased that the quality of the DV tapes was a big improvement over the original VHS tapes. I then imported the DV tapes into iMovie and have been creating DVDs of my old photos and movies.
I have found that those VHS clips were darker and less clear when viewed in iMovie, but on the burned DVD they came out better. "Better" is a subjective term, because VHS quality is much less than digital to begin with, and the older the VHS tape, the worse quality. So, I am not sure why you are finding that the burned DVDs are not so good. I would expect them to be better, as I have found.
Maybe it is because I recorded the tapes to digital first, before importing into iMovie. I did it this way because I wanted to have the DV tapes to preserve the VHS movies in addition to the iMovies and iDVDs that I am making.
I have not yet purchased iLife 06 because of the problems I have been following in these forums. I have everything working well in v5, so I am going to continue on with that until I get more of my movies completed. I started with 1979, and am finishing 1990 this week! Only 15 more years-worth to go!
Good luck to you!

Editing and image quality in Lightroom

Hello all,
I am a new Lightroom user (Lightroom 5) and I've watched several tutorial videos and I've had a lot of fun playing around with the program. I've noticed that Lightroom is said to be "non-destructive" when it comes to editing. Apparently, you can do all the editing you want to an image (i.e. adjusting exposure, cropping, etc.) and there is no loss of image quality as you edit. Is this correct?
I would hate to think that my tinkering around with the editing tools results in loss of image quality each time I change something. ("Hmm, I like that exposure. Now let me adjust shadows. No....that doesn't look right when I do that. I'll just change the exposure a bit more...."! I intend to put photos onto an image hosting site and present them, so I want the quality to be the best it can be!
I appreciate any help anyone can offer.
Cheers,
Tom

I am a new Lightroom user (Lightroom 5) and I've watched several tutorial videos and I've had a lot of fun playing around with the program. I've noticed that Lightroom is said to be "non-destructive" when it comes to editing. Apparently, you can do all the editing you want to an image (i.e. adjusting exposure, cropping, etc.) and there is no loss of image quality as you edit. Is this correct?
I know of no image editing software that causes loss of image quality when you make an edit. Editing steps simply cause a change to the image based on the edit you perform, not a loss of quality. This is true of Lightroom and every other image editor that I know of.
If you choose to save (or in Lightroom do an export) as a JPG, then there is a loss of image quality each time you perform a save as a JPG. If you need to have a JPG of your edited photo for some reason, then this loss of image quality is unavoidable, but in most cases you won't even notice. Thus, in Lightroom, creating a JPG from the edited photo is the LAST step in the process, thereby minimizing the image quality loss.

Loss of Image quality and shimmering in Imove

Hi. This is a posting very similar to another forum user but I have the same problem!. I am downloading images from a Pentax K10D onto the Book pro and they are fine, as soon as you load them into iMovie they are terrible, poor image quality, edges of what ever is inside the photo move with a shimmering affect. I have been to the macintosh shop where I live and they don't know!. I have put this on Mac help pages in the USA and Spain still now help or comments, surely someone must have an idea as to why this is going on or is it through bad design of software!!??. regards to all. Kevin

Hi Matti. Thanks for your work and help you are giving to me and others. I have printed off your info and will try and get my poor old brain round it!. So many people are having the same problem with iMovie it's amazing that the mac software dept has no don anything to rectify this bug and or problem. I have downloaded the software you state "Photo to Movie" but it does not seem to have the same things as iMovie with all the fancy transitions of images and music in the background, I have tried 4 images in this software and thay come up on full screen as 100% perfect, I still have to work out how to get them onto DVD with some kind of presentation. I want to start in the field of wedding photography and need some high end presentation software for digital wedding albums or Imaging with transitin affects, what would you recomend?. I am in spain so we are on PAL here, I think!. I have people over here in the Spanish Mac forums asking about the same problems, is it OK with you to translate some of yours and pass over to them in Spanish?. best regards. Kevin

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.

Protechnius into iMovie image quality problems

We created a bmp animation with audio in Protechnius - it's a 90 MB AVI file. Play it with Media Player or QT (not QTPro) and it looks and sounds great. Music was longer than movie, so imported it into iMovie to clip it. When 'share' it to QT movie, looks awful no matter what we do. After reading several Posts, I realize that the computer monitor isn't as good as a TV monitor, but I don't understand why it looks great in Media Player and QT before iMovie, but awful after iMovie. Appreciate any help - the project's due tomorrow...of course.
Oh, btw, this is never going to be played on anything but a computer. I'm not trying to make a DVD-quality movie; I'm trying to make a computer-screen quality movie with clear, sharp images - like what you see on quality websites. It needs to be small enough to email...
Kristina

AVI is just a container, much like a MOV. You never know what is actually inside this container.
When importing into iMovie, it's always converted to DV, which has a fixed resolution. Then share to QT movie and the movie is converted again. You have lost quality twice.
Try QT Pro instead. There you can crop the audio without quality loss.

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!!

Image quality loss in iMovie

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