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

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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.

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 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)

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)

Help with photo import quality in iMovie!

The resolution of the iPhoto (5.0.2) pics once dragged into iMovie (5.0.4) severly deteriorates on my iMovie project. The photos are 21 inches widecrystal clear JPEGS in iPhoto, Preview and Photoshop, except once dragged onto iMovie they look blurry and pixely. My digital camera is a Sony 7.2 (shot pixs at 5M)
Playing project footage on full screen in iMovie looks this way as well. So it is not just the import still shot on the clipboard that looks bad.
How do I fix this problem to get clear quality ?

Create your iMovie project in a high quality format (choose the highest one possible) and then the pics you import will be imported in a high quality. iMovie automatically adjusts the quality of your pics and movies based on the quality of the iMovie project you are creating.
I'm not sure what you mean by "a high quality format", hlokty. Are you referring to the iMovie Playback preference, which lets you pick one of three playback settings?
If so, note that preference does NOT affect the quality of the imported image. It has no affect on the quality of project clips like video, photos, or anything else. The preference only affects playback in iMovie itself. Low quality improves the playback smoothness. High quality improves the playback image.
If should be noted that iMovie NEVER shows us all the quality that's there, for either video or photos. That must be kept in mind when viewing photos imported to iMovie. It's important to not judge quality by what you see in iMovie. iMovie is a video editor, not a video player.
There are many Topics here discussing photo quality. To find them, search for words like "blurry" and "jaggies".
Here's one:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=2105598&#2105598
Karl

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"

Pearl 8220 camera image quality is poor, poor, poor

The photo image quality of the camera on my BB Pearl 8220 is extremely grainy and dark.
I understand this is a cell phone camera and expectations are low to begin with, but this is unacceptably low quality. The flash appears to function properly but that doesn't matter because the image quality is poor even for pictures taken in full sunlight.
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i've taken some good pics with our phones...
I did notice that you need to be extremely steady (no built in "camera shake"), but other than that, its all been good.
I used the options to make the pics as large as possible too; but I do that with our digital camera as well. I use Paint Shop to edit them on our PC.
Where there is a will, there is a way...
If there is no way; there is always a bigger hammer.

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

"Still" photo quality in iMovie & iDVD

I work with still photographs only. Trying to produce a slideshow DVD that maintains the original quality of the photo. After reading some postings on iMovie & this problem, I took the advice of several photographers & now use FotoMagico. Photo qulaity is execellent as images are not coverted to video as they are in iMovie. Program also allows the transitions & Ken Burns effects available in iMovie. To produce DVD, you must export to iDVD or Roxio Toast to burn DVD. After export to iDVD the images degraded - both on the screen & on the burned DVD & hen played on screen or HD TV. I don't have Roxio Toast. Does Roxio maintain the photo file or covert to video image? Can someone tell me what it will take to produce a DVD from Still photographs that will maintain image quality & offer transitions & title slides?

There is a > Discussion > iMovie > iMovie HD6 going on into which I entered. I posted the following earlier today. I am the entrant with trhe Japanese doll in red, can't miss it.
Have you a set prescription that you use when beginning the Burn to Disc from iDVD. That's where my problem is.
Please read the following and send help soon . . . potis
"My rendering is from iPhoto to FotoMagico. There the album is assembled with all of FoMo's attributes. I find it very user friendly. The blurring of a photo in iPhoto with the Blur adjustment does blur alright and it my instances I get a perceptible lightening of the image. Useable, but not the original. —Cut to the finish. Beautiful rendering in FoMo, so sent to iDVD the 130 photos and music. Beautiful in iMac playback in iDVD. Cannot complain a wink. Burn disc. Play disc, and there are the jaggies on the two buildings, one a church with lots of green and white marble on the facade, the other the Ponte Vechicco shimmering as in a desert as the zoom moves out. The jaggies appear on any horizontal or vertical shape, especially buildings (as noted elsewhere in this forum).
My logic says that if the project plays very well in iDVD and wavers in a DVD burnt from iDVD, that the wavies are introduced in the burn process. I tried recording at Slideshow settings of HD 720p as suggested. No help there.
Another suggestion has been that the digital cameras are ahead of the iMac Dual Core capabilities. I don't know about that. My Pentax SLR does load them in.
For the moment I am eliminating the two dramatic zooms because they are distracting and waiting for a solution which will have to take form outside of my meager experience.
Thanks muchas for your reply.
potis
iMac Mac OS X (10.4.7) "

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.
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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

Still images used in iMovie ('09) look bad, poor quality

I'm curious why my photos look poor in iMovie? Is this just a lo-res rendering that I'm seeing on screen, or is this really how they're going to look? I'm using the photo browser in iMovie and selecting photos from both iPhoto and Aperture, just as suggested in iMovie...i'm not using some weird import method. The photos I'm using were shot with a 5D Mark II, so no slouch in photographic capabilities. All are of proper exposure and, on screen in Aperture for instance, they look amazing. But in iMovie, there is banding and pixelation, particularly when dealing with dark, rich colors, and especially black. When those colors show on screen, they look like there were taken with a terrible camera at a low resolution. Is this just a lo-res on-screen render? Or is this how it's going to look when I export this to iDVD and play it on my television?

I too made a very similar post last week and had no responses. It is a software problem I believe, there is no doubt about that. I showed this problem to some apple guys at a tradeshow. They used my pics on their computers with the same result. They could not provide an answer. they said they would raise it with apple techs.
The issue was eveident when i purchased my mac book pro with leopard and now with snow leopard. I have made some DVD's and the issues present on the TV screen as well.
imovie imports, compresses these pics too much and the result is poor on a lot of images. I'm not sure imovie can handle the amount of colour, or isn't equipped to do so. Pixelation and gradations, particulary similar colours. Skies, sunsets etc are the biggest offenders Whatever the case it is a big dissapointment. iphoto to a quicktime movie is fine quality wise but has its limitations with adding transitions, titles, music etc.
Please apple, lets have a fix. imovie06HD was fantastic - what went wrong here?

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!!

Photo image quality in iMovie

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