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 ....

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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.
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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:

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Ps I have a toshiba laptop and I made the imovie on my Mac desktop at school (and I don't know which model/year iMovie and Mac I have)

How to export from iMovie HD without losing quality?

I created a movie in iMovie HD made from clips from my camera which records great quality HD video, and now I want to export it and save as a movie file so that I can import it into iMovie '09 as part of a larger project. However, every time I try to export it, the resulting file has noticeably worse quality than when I view it in iMovie HD. I have tried the "full quality" option which exports as a .mov file, but the quality is much worse. I have also tried "Expert settings" choosing DV, AVI and MPEG-4 and have changed the settings to the best options I could find, but still the quality is worsened every time. How can I export my video without losing quality??

Do you mean import what I have in iMovie 09 into iMovie HD/06 instead? I suppose I could but I wanted to add some of iMovie 09's titles and adjustment effects to my iMovie HD/06 project, so it could get quite complicated trying to piece it all together. I may have to do that as a last resort, but does anyone know any way I can get around this?
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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.
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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

How do I edit a .mov file in iMovie '09 without losing quality?

Hi!
Can anyone tell me how to edit .mov files in iMovie '09 without losing quality?
I have perfectly fine looking screen capture video from iShowU. It's 1024x768, 30 fps, Animation compression codec. It's a .mov file that looks great played in the QuickTime player. I can't even tell it's a movie -- it just looks like the screen I captured.
Now, I bring it into iMovie '09, trim the ends, and Export to QuickTime using no compression and the same fps and size. The output quality is noticeably lower than the input quality, which makes no sense to me because I'm telling the export not to compress (and my Preferences are set to "Import HD video as Full-Original Size".
I just want to trim the ends off a video -- maybe combine a couple files -- but without wrecking the quality of the originals. That really doesn't sound like it should be all that hard, but so far, it's been impossible.
Any pointers are greatly appreciated!!
-- gnagent

I've found the answer. On the File/Import/Movies... dialog, uncheck "Optimize Video" even if you have "Full - Original Size" selected. You don't want any optimizations done, even at original size. Then make sure you are exporting at precisely the same size as the original file, which means that under the Export to Quicktime/Options/Video Size dialog you do NOT want to check "Preserve aspect ratio using:" Just use "Custom" size and set your size to exactly what "Get Info" tells you when you view the file in the Finder.
Make sure that Video/Settings is set to Compression Type: None, and that you have the Frame Rate exactly what your original was.
Hope this helps someone.
-- gnagent

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.

IMovie Hangs After Full Quality Sharing Is Complete

Hi,
Why does this happen? I did a Full Quality Share on a 2-1/2 hour multi-clip movie (using Share Selected Clips Only). The export progress dialog hung after the export was clearly finished. I eventually had to Force Quit iMovie.
The exported movie looks fine in QT Pro. However, Movie Properties in QT shows that this movie is 24 frames longer than what I exported from iMovie. Doesn't seem to be a big deal, but annoying nonetheless.
I'm more concerned about iMovie hanging after a long movie export as described.

2-1/2 hour multi-clip movie (using Share Selected Clips Only)
so, your project is in timeline even longer then 150min? how much did you import into iM, to create such a "beast"? must be a gigantic project, hm?... Titanic II... ;-))
iM is a consumer product, we do read of reports here, that from some point of size (imported data, length, complexity of project), iM is a little "overwhelmed..." esp., iM is part of iLife, meaning, mainly meant exports go to tape (=60min max.) or iDVD (120min max.)
secondly, MacOsX is a UNIX system, which makes excessive use of socalled temp-files on (startup-) harddrive... it is recommended, not to overcrowd the drive 80 - 90% of max.
probably, your ~35GB of data transfer from a ~60GB project was simply too much for your Mac?
helpful?

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

Imovie to aperture export

Hi,
I'm struggling with creating a multimedia slide show in aperture. Of course it's possible to import HD videos into aperture, but how can I import movies that I optimized in imovie before? The only way so far I found is to work on every scene in imovie, save it individually as an imovie project and export it into .mov to then open that one in Aperture - scene by scene.
I didn't find a way to create an imovie project and drag and drop individual scenes or clips to aperture.
Any idea anybody?

Hi, and welcome to the Forums.
First, just in case there's another option for recovery, do you happen to know how the pictures we're accidentally lost?
As for recovering them from iMovie/iDVD:
You can download the free open source (and useful) VLC Media Player. www.videolan.org/vlc
Below is a link to a tutorial (scroll down past the Windows portion) to show you how to grab a frame from your .mov file used to create your DVD. The quality of the photo frame captured may likely be less than the quality of the original photo from your camera, but it's better than nothing and will probably still look fine when used in other slide shows, screen savers, on iDevices, etc.
http://www.tvcrit.com/tvcrit3/framegrab/VLC9/

Free converter .mov to iMovie without loss of quality?

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Many thanks.
British Voice Over
www.crystalclearvoiceovers.co.uk

It is suggested to output MOV with AIC codec to keep the raw video quality at max.
Output like this: Share->Export Using QuickTime..
In pop-up windows, click Options->in Moive Settings pop-up window, click Settings button->In Compression Type box, choose Apple Intermediate Codec
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Best Practices for sharing media with iMovie and FCPX

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I'd rather not duplicate the media, so would prefer to import as references into FCPX.
The dilemma is that I see that it's possible to modify or move media from within the iMovie application, and therefore break the reference to that media with FCPX.
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Unless there is some other reason, users should own the right to share their mailboxes - it shouldn't be something that demands administrator management (if only so that the administrators aren't swamped by user requests for sharing their mailboxes).
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How do I share a new project on imovie if the export option is greyed out and not an option?

how do I share a new project on imovie if the export option is greyed out and not an option?

nicoleking wrote:
... I heard that if you bring in your old iPhone, they will give you a new one with some kind of fee, but I don't know how that works.
https://discussions.apple.com/message/22920500

Export quality grainy for TEXT / TITLE

Hello there,
Am kind of a newb, but am getting used to the basics and am happy with the video export quality. For some reason, the TITLE objects are coming out grainy, even when viewed at 100% size. I tried different output types, bitrates, changed fonts, font size, position, etc. Put black background behind, removed background, no matter what am still getting the fonts looking crappy once exported.
Some screenshots of what I see in the Premiere Pro output preview / workspace, and then a second shot showing the resulting output (same result in diff bitrates, just chose one as example)
In Pro:
http://fms.whoajack.com/textIssue01.png
Exported:
http://fms.whoajack.com/textIssue02.png
Any ideas?
Thanks for any suggestions,
Greg

DV is far from the best codec for text. But the real problem is that you're using FCP's built-in text generators. Instead, use the Boris Title 3D and Boris Title Crawl generators. They produce much cleaner vector-based text and have a ton of more options for creativity.
-DH

IMovie vs FCPX export quality

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