IMovie'08 low export quality

Hi!
I have recorded a video on my Canon A630 photocam. Of course it's not pro videocam, but video quality in 640x480 is quite good. I imported this movie into iPhoto (it actually just copies AVI files from cam to hdd) an previewed it in iPhoto. Quality was good.
Then I created a new project in iMovie with this video, trimed it a bit. And exported to iTunes in 640x480 res. When I opened in iTunes I was very surprised by such a low quality: video became lighter, colors were washed out, there were more compression artifacts! Compare it yourself: http://idisk.mac.com/hardwarrior/Public/Pictures/Skitch/Skitch-20081229-142253.j pg right is from iMovie and left one is from cam. Is there a way to increase encoding quality in iMovie'08?

Hi,I am new to iMac and need help. I have HD 1080i tape camera, I have recorded some water polo games and have been importing that to iMovie. No problem there. Created project, actually no editing as I needed it all, no transitions,no music added . I had a preview and quality was perfect. I clicked share- Media bowser , Large . I have opened iDVD and created DVD using existing Theme-revolution.
I have burned DVD. I have done this for 3-4 recorded games and DVD video quality was excellent.
I have not done any changes to setting either to my iMac or video Camera since, however now when I am doing the same with a new recorded game and go through same steps quality of video is very poor. You can not see players faces everything is blurred.
Also for 40min of video it takes 110 minutes of burning time.

Similar Messages

Imovie 09 export quality

Hello everyone! I think this is a great forum so I decided to post here. You know, this problem is very popular and here are many posts like this. The trouble was that when I imported AVCHD video from my Sony HD camera (DVD) the quality was lower and the mov files were huge(e.g. 10 gb instead of 1,5 gb) after converting to AIC (mov). I found here that it's possible to prevent recoding a video by using ffmpeg command-line, it just extracts the video from the .m2ts container and names it mp4 (btw if you need the issue I will write it down here in reply). This is ok though videos work slower while editing. Now the problem is - can I avoid encoding videos when I EXPORT them? Maybe I can use some options in h264 to avoid recoding or I can extract my final cut out of imovie. I noticed that "allow recoding" checkbox is unavailable in .mov settings and in mp4 it's impossible to avoid it. Yo have to choose settings such as bitrate and so on. and if I export like that the quality is much worth especially colors are pale. What is about my computer it's modern and fast, it doens't matter.

You may read it here )
http://joeshaw.org/2010/04/10/655
and here the issue is discussed in details
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=12221313&#12221313
If you get the answer about export could you let me know?

Can I improve iMovie file export quality?

I’ve captured my old home videos as mp4 files using Elgato Video Capture, and the quality is quite good. But if I import a capture to iMovie, edit, and export as “High” quality, there is considerable degradation of video quality. Furthermore, the original file is less than half as large as the iMovie export version. I haven’t tried the next step up in quality, but iMovie estimates that the file size would be 32 GB, which is out of the question.
Is this what one should expect of iMovie, or am I missing something?

That could be related to your connection.
If streaming via Internet what is your speed via speedtest.net
Check istumbler or netstumbler to check for interference
Ensure there are no other network activities

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.

IMovie vs FCPX export quality

Afternoon/morning all.
Question I have is regarding the export quality of FCPX vs iMovie!!
I've been using iMovie for over a year now but only recently started to publish my work.
I get on with iMovie great but the one issue that let's it down is the export quality, it's been driving me crazy but after finally looking into it seems that iMovie is the problem and reduces the footage quality.
I'm just thinking about upgrading to FCPX the extra editing features and functions will be great too.
I just want to know that the exporting footage in FCPX won't reduce the quality of the footage!
Can anybody help!!
Thanks

'quality' is a very complex issue.
Most consumer IMPORTS do look nice, when the cam is connected straight to a telly.
… but those recordings contain tons of 'flaws'. (low bitrates, artefacts due to wrong exposure etc)
the difference, how iMovie and FCPX handle that:
• iM uses as intermediate AppleIntermediateCodec - which does marvel with all the diff. flavors of video, a consumer wants to edit ... but it is far from perfect.
• … and iMovie deinterlaces interlaced material = reducing vertical resolution by half
• FCPX transcodes to proRes or even handles codecs 'natively' - which reduces transcoding errors (dramatically)
on export, both apps use the same Quicktime-engine, I dare to say no difference.
using the wrong export settings, multiplies bad imports …
the 'hurt' is done on import, …
and most damage, in terms of quality, is done on recording ....

Which has better export quality. imovie 11' or adobe premiere?

has anyone used both? which has better quality when you export it? I notice that imovie downgrades the quality when exporting by a LOT. It looks great inside imovie and looks terrible once exported!

Hi
I can only guess - (have no Premiere) but
Depends on what will be the end result. DVD or publish on YouTube etc. or saved on an USB-Memory to be Played on PlayStation 3 and alike.
If DVD - then most probably Adobe Premiere is better (if it can export interlaced video to iDVD) - iMovie'08 or 09 or 11 can not do this - they discard every second line resulting in a sever loss of quality.
I use
• iMovie HD6
• FinalCut any version
And they do deliver full quality over to iDVD
If other end results - then it most probably doesn't matter.
Yours Bengt W

So what's the export quality like???

Hi, after the 'pain' of i-movie 8, what's the view on the export quality in 9?
Does it export high enough quality to look good when burnt to dvd and played back on tv?

Welcome to Apple Discussions!
It looks the same as iMovie 08.
I did a compare one day using the same clip burned to DVD from iMovie 06 and from iMovie '08.
The iMovie 06 clip looked like it came from the DV camera directly and the iMovie 08 clip looked much worse. The difference is the single field processing used by iMovie 08/09 and the fact that it throws out every other horizontal line.
Because the two softwares handle the imported video differently - single field processing is how iMovie 08 / 09 handles the video, meaning that one of every two lines of the image is ignored. iMovie 06 uses ALL of the image to form the video.
If your primary workflow is editing DV clips and making DVDs, iMovie '06 is better suited. Your movie will arrive at iDVD in DV format, which is an ideal match for making a DVD: same resolution, same pixels aspect ratio, and original quality. If you share your movie from iMovie '08 / 09, it gets re-rendered at 640x480 or less, and then iDVD upscales it back to 720x480. The end result is obviously not as good.

Hang ups and jerkiness in iMovie HD export to mini dv camera

I have a big problem-- while I am trying to export a TV show created in *_iMovie HD 6.0.3 (267.2)*_ to my *Sony DCR TRV-900*, which I have done many times.
Suddenly, there is jerkiness upon export to my camera. My iMoive video which plays back normally on the coputer looks jerky and almost slo mo while going to camera, and is also like than when the mini dv is played back. However the audio quality seems to be ok on the mini dv.
FYI, this show is made up of a series of Full Quality Quicktime chunks (ie individual scenes that I made and exported thru iMovie as Full Quality QuickTime, and then re-imported as individual Quicktime video chunks so not to tax the exporting capacity of iMovie too much).
The show is about 26 minutes, and the size of the iMovie file is about 26 gigs. The file resides on a Maxtor external drive with firewire 400.
I have plugged and replugged, turned camera on and off, and changed mini dv tapes a couple of times...
Does anybody out there know what is up with this jerky outputting problem?
Thanks
Michael in LA

Not sure why you should have this problem now, but you can export the entire movie as a new Full Quality Quicktime, and then reimport that into a new iMovie and export that new iMovie to your camcorder.
Just be sure you have enough free space on your hard drive where your iMovie is located.
.....that MIGHT be the problem with the jerking......how much free space do you have?

Is Your Footage Suffering from the Massive Difference in Export Quality Between FCPX

I read this article today and considering I do all my rendering through Premiere or AME it made me a little concerned. What does Adobe think of this? and has any else experienced this problem?
Cheers,
Moja.
I took this article from: Is Your Footage Suffering from the Massive Difference in Export Quality Between FCPX & Premiere?
A rational person might assume that the program from which you export your media wouldn't have a noticeable impact on the quality of the final image, especially if the export settings are identical in both programs. A recent test by filmmaker Noam Kroll might just teach us to think twice before making assumptions.
First, a little bit of background on Kroll's test. Having noticed that exporting from Adobe Media Encoder yielded quicker results than using the same settings and exporting from FCPX, he tended to use Media Encoder for the bulk of his exporting. When a recently exported project came out with some nasty compression artifacts, blocky rendering of certain areas, and a noticeable change in color quality, Kroll put on his detective's hat and tried exporting again from FCPX. To his, and soon to be your, surprise, the exported result from FCPX yielded significantly higher image quality with the EXACT same export and compression settings.
Don't believe it? Have a look for yourself. According to Kroll, "both FCP X and Premiere Pro were set to output a high quality H.264 file at 10,000 kbps." The image on top was exported from FCPX and the bottom was exported from Premiere Pro.
Exported from FCPX
Exported from Premiere Pro
In the shots above, you'll notice more blocky compression artifacts in the version exported from Premiere, especially on the lower part of the woman's face, and there's a fairly significant reddish hue that's been introduced into the midtones and shadows of the Premiere export. Here's a version of the same shot that is cropped in on the woman's face by 400%. This is where the difference between the two starts to become painfully obvious. Again, FCPX is on top, and Premiere on the bottom.
Exported from FCPX
Exported from Premiere Pro
Here's the conclusion that Kroll came to in his post.
After seeing this I can confidently say that I will not be compressing to H.264 using Premiere Pro or Adobe Media Encoder any more. [sic] The image from Premiere is so much blockier, less detailed, and muddy looking, not to mention that the colors aren’t at all accurate. In fact I even did another output test later on with Premiere Pro set to 20,000 kbps and FCP X only set to 10,000 kbps and still the FCP X image was noticeably higher quality, so clearly something is up.
It's really difficult to speculate as to what's going on behind the scenes that's causing such a drastic difference in results between the two programs. However, what is clear is that you should take caution when exporting to h.264 from Premiere and Media Encoder. Regardless of the program that you're using, perform your own tests and make sure that the export process is leaving your media with a visual quality appropriate for the delivery medium.
The good news here is that Adobe is extremely receptive to feedback from their user base, and their Creative Cloud subscription model allows them to roll out updates with a much higher frequency than they could with the boxed version of the Creative Suite. If more people are experiencing these problems and reporting it to Adobe, chances are that we'll see an update with fixes sometime in the near future. With that said, I have no idea how Adobe handles the technical process of exporting, so it could very well take a complete overhaul of how the program encodes h.264 to fix the problem.

Well, I did my own little comparison with a shot from my A7s (XAVCS 50mbps) and seeing as I don't have FCP X I used FCP 7. The AME H264 looks nicer than the FCP one in this instance.
Dropbox - WALKING 444.jpg
Pro Res 444 from Premiere
Dropbox - WALKING AME.jpg
H264 from AME at these settings:
Dropbox - WALKING FCP.jpg
H264 from FCP 7 at these settings:

Export quality in After Effects

I'm using After Effects CS4 and have exported as an MPEG-4. The quality of the final movie is very poor. It looks like a low quality JPEG. In After Effects preview, it looks fine.
I'm familiar with exporting quality videos out of Premiere. Is the usual workflow to open AE projects in Premiere and use the options there to export? Or am I missing something in AE?

That may be, but I'm just not a fan. I did some tests a few years ago and decided that Animation
wasn't worth it and that it was in fact creating artifacts in my renders.
Just to show my work, I am pulling some info from wikipedia as a reference:
"For complex 3D rendered scenes or digitized film of real-world footage, it barely compresses at all and also can add visible noise."
Now I know, wikipedia isn't highly reliable, anyone can edit it, blah blah blah, but this statement runs congruent to my own findings. Add to that the weighty file size, and then the fact that this codec is officially my ENEMY because my students, who are instructed to use Sorenson 3, often forget to change the codec for their .mov renders, and so sometimes I get these bloated files that I have to trash and they have to re-render, and I just don't really care for this codec at all.
I just don't render video any more. Haven't for a long time now. So many advantages to using img sequences, I haven't looked back to big bloated video files.

Imovie burn high quality??

Hi,
I've exported an iDVD 720p movie to my hard drive. I found an old version of iDVD and have been able to get it on the comp and play around. The challenge is, any time I try to burn a higher quality version (the video file is 10GB) to a dual layer DVD to maintain as much quality as possible, iDVD gives me an encoding error. I've also tried Roxio Toast - I can get it to burn to dual layer DVD, but it's so grainy it's terrible - worse than pulling it up on Youtube. On the mac, the video is beautiful. Crisp, good colors.
I'm needing suggestions. What I'm needing to do is very basic and I'm very good with computers, but this is frustrating not only me, but my parents, who purchased the computer for their business to be able to archive high quality recordings of their shows. It's been a nightmare telling them that the $1,200 computer they bought can't seem to do this VERY BASIC task.
We have an Apple iMac purchased in May 2013 - so as new as can be basically. Standard iMac, no upgrades.
HELP?!?!

DVDs are by standards just 720x480 in resolution… about a quarter of your actual footage.
And playback a DVD 'full screen' on an iMac zooms-in again, blowing up the few pixels, about by factor 6x.
keep this in mind, when judging 'quality'.-
To get max possible quality, stay under 60min of content on SL dvd-r, 120min on DL dvd-r
Putting <60min on DL has no effect, just draining your wallet …
In iMovie, choose Export using Quicktime, in the many options, select AppleIntermediateCodec, which will export the internal timeline of your project without any un-neccessary transcoding. File is huge, don't worry, it's all about length. not size.
Drag resulting mov into iDVD. Works perfectly here…
Worked, to be precise. Haven't done a disk for years now

Youtube Export Quality

Is the youtube export quality improved in iMovie 09? Is 640x360 still the maximum size for direct upload to youtube?
Thanks,
Shawn

Is the youtube export quality improved in iMovie 09?
iMovie has little to do with the end quality of files other than determining the size/duration/quality of the files sent to YouTube. All files sent to YouTube are converted to FLV by Youtube. This conversion by Youtube itself determines the final resolution/quality of your files. If quality is what you seek, then it is probably best to create your own website and post your video at the resolution and level of quality which you can manage yourself. YouTube and similar sites aim for compatibility of viewing -- not quality.
Is 640x360 still the maximum size for direct upload to youtube?
I don't believe there are restrictions on resolution -- just duration (10 minutes) and file size (1 GB). Whatever you upload will be re-compressed to fit in the 1 GB file size limit. Higher quality means shorter times. Larger files usually mean more compression to fit it within the YouTube file size restriction. Your best bet is to review the Help resources area at Youtube.

Export quality of CS6 compared to CS3

Having had Premiere Pro CS3 for about 5 years I recently upgraded to CS6 but immediately found problems achieving the same kind of export quality I had before. Initially I was testing with a project created in CS3 but then simplified the matter by creating a new project in CS3 and entering a single piece of text and exporting as a single tiff frame and doing exactly the same in CS6 and attached is the comparison. I can't of the life of me figure out what the problem is, hopefully someone can help.
Thanks,
Keith.

Okay, thanks for the further input, I've made progress with it, I've discovered it's to do with the field order setting. Basically my knowledge of video editing and video standards is rather limited and the kind of work I've done in the past has mostly been to produce animations from 3ds Max which are simply shown as demonstrations to people on a PC or laptop, and so when setting up a new project in Premiere I always selected "Desktop" editing mode, changed some settings and left others as default such as Fields: Lower Field First, mainly because I didn't know what it meant.
When exporting the finished video the default would be Progressive Scan and everything fine, so never touched it. With CS6 if I do everything the same way I get the problem described above, but if for new projects I select Progressive Scan in the setup then everything is fine. (Similarly with lower field in setup and export).
However I still have a problem with imported CS3 projects. In CS6 if I simply open the project and select Lower Field on export, or start a new project with Progressive Scan in setup and import the project, the fuzziness I had before is gone but now I get the effect in the following attached image (a print screen from a paused video, left one exactly as I expect):
I have found a work around though, which is to start a new CS6 project with progressive scan in setup, import the project, then create a new sequence and copy the contents of the imported sequence into it and that exports fine, although I suppose it could get complicated when there are sequences inside sequences. I'm sure there is still something simple I'm missing to do this in a more seamless manner, if anyone has any ideas please let me know.

IMovie 2 export problem

I'm trying to convert a friend's VHS tape to a DVD. The tape is in bad shape but there is enough still intact to make my attempt to preserve it worth my time.
I've successfully digitized the original video into iMovie. The individual clips of the 45 minutes I recorded play successfully while I view them via iMovie's timeline.
So far so good.
Next I exported the movie choosing "Export for iDVD" from the Export menu option.
iMovie created a .MOV file for me that looks fine from the information Finder can give me.
So I double-clicked on the .MOV file to verify that the contents of the file were OK too.
After a few seconds (ranging from 5 to 43 based on multiple tries), the movie stops playing and my Mac freezes - except for the mouse. I can move the cursor around the screen but everything else in th UI is unresponsive.
Any suggestions on what I can do to get iMovie to create a .MOV file that "works"?
Gary

What usually works for me is to export the iMovie as Quicktime, Full Quality. I usually specify to have it created on my desktop so I can find it, and I give it the same name as the original iMovie, but append QT to the name.
This gives a single clip movie. You will need to quit your iMovie, and then create a new iMovie project. Be sure to name it so that you know it is the second version. Drag this qt clip into it. Be patient. It can take time in iM2. In later versions, you can have more than one iMovie project open at the same time, but not in iM2.
After you have the qt version in a new movie project, check to see that it plays properly. If you had chapter markers in the original iMovie, you will need to make them again. Also, check the end of the movie....sometimes the qt version will have some 'snow' for several seconds at the end. You probably want to move the cursor to the spot just before that starts and crop off the unwanted end. Close iMovie.
Next, open iDVD and create a new project. Instead of sending your iMovie by 'exporting to iDVD' just drag it into iDVD's main screen.
You should now see your movie in iDVD, and can burn your project.
Good luck.
Post back if the above does not help.

Imovie 10 export problem

Bonjour,
J'ai fait un projet avec mix video et photo et musique mais quand j'essaye de l'exporter imovie plante
quelqu'un aurait il une solution
Merci

What usually works for me is to export the iMovie as Quicktime, Full Quality. I usually specify to have it created on my desktop so I can find it, and I give it the same name as the original iMovie, but append QT to the name.
This gives a single clip movie. You will need to quit your iMovie, and then create a new iMovie project. Be sure to name it so that you know it is the second version. Drag this qt clip into it. Be patient. It can take time in iM2. In later versions, you can have more than one iMovie project open at the same time, but not in iM2.
After you have the qt version in a new movie project, check to see that it plays properly. If you had chapter markers in the original iMovie, you will need to make them again. Also, check the end of the movie....sometimes the qt version will have some 'snow' for several seconds at the end. You probably want to move the cursor to the spot just before that starts and crop off the unwanted end. Close iMovie.
Next, open iDVD and create a new project. Instead of sending your iMovie by 'exporting to iDVD' just drag it into iDVD's main screen.
You should now see your movie in iDVD, and can burn your project.
Good luck.
Post back if the above does not help.

IMovie'08 low export quality

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