Photo To Movie - A solution to Jaggy edges to a moving still? (Ken Burns)

Question

Hello Hello
I know folks have talked about this before ......
I recently received a tip about 'Photo to Movie', and how it improves those Jaggy images (the outer parameter of a photo), that can be seen in both Quicktime (on your computer screen), AND from a burned DVD on your TV.
Well I have to admit that 'Photo to Movie' definitely helps remove the Jaggies.
BUT
Is is just me - or is it true that there is less quality in those panned and zoomed images as compared to iMovie? It certainly looks so to me ...... perhaps less detail .... on the TV screen
Ya know when iMovie HD came out, I immediately saw an improvement in the resolution of burned movies onto a DVD on the TV.
I've read the other posts about the Jaggy problem in Pans and Zooms including these solutions:
Workaround #1 is to turn ON the Ken Burns Effect before importing an image.
(I always do that)
Workaround #2 is to convert still images to good quality video with Photo To Movie. Photo To Movie and Still Life have more features than iMovie's built-in Ken Burns effect. Photo To Movie's High Quality setting renders still images into very good quality video that doesn't flicker when viewed on a TV.
(I just bought Photo to Movie - it works)
But again is there a trade off in perhaps less detail in the images?
Thanx

Answer 1

When you look at movies, or frames of movies, in iMovie, you're looking at the entire frame. So if you import photos into iMovie, and don't use any panning or zooming, you'll see the entire photo ..but - as Karsten and Matthew say - at a reduced quality than the original photo(s), because movie resolution is lower than photo resolution.
To create a zoom out or pan effect across a picture, you obviously have to start with a smaller area of the picture than the area of the full photo. You then travel across the photo, still using a smaller area than the full photo, or you zoom out until you're looking at the entire photo.
If you start with a smaller section that the full photo, then if the photo has only a little higher resolution than video (..say it's a 3 megapixel photo..) then that smaller section has to be automatically enlarged to fill the entire video frame, so the apparent resolution of that smaller area of the entire picture will probably appear to be less sharp than the overall, entire photo.
It's like examining a newspaper photo with a magnifying glass: you'll start to see the detail of the dots which comprise the photo, instead of seeing the overall photo as a whole.
The higher the resolution of the original photo - e.g; 8 or 10 megapixels - the less will seem to be the quality loss as you pan or zoom across a small region of it.
But if you start with a 2, 3 or perhaps 5 megapixel photo, then - depending on how far you zoom "into" it - you may well see a poorer quality image in the panned or zoomed sections than you would see on the overall image.
..As in the film "Blow-Up" ..the more you magnify something, the less clear it can become ..unless maybe you're using an electron microscope..