Pics still poor quality in iMovie HD

Hi, Trying to help a photographer to make a still image slideshow in iMovie 4, I discovered the images were of such poor quality as to be unuseable. I upgraded to iLife thinking that iMovie HD might use better quality. It doesn't appear so. The photographer doesn't think the Ken Burns effect does anything to improve the visual degradation of his images. Is this simply the case, or is there any way around it?

iMovie doesn't preview well, you really need to go all the way through the process of creating what appears to be a crap DVD to discover that.
To make sure you're not misunderstanding...
The problem isn't just that iMovie HD doesn't display the image as well as it might. The poor-quality image on the DVD is a real problem, which occurs when the slideshow is handled in a way that allows iMovie to add "jaggies" to the image on the way out the door to iDVD. Search for "jaggies".
Here's one:
Karl Petersen, "iMovie- Pictures become blurry after import" #32, 11:37am Apr 25, 2005 CDT
Done correctly, you should get excellent results.
Karl

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Poor Quality in iMovie 09 with Stills

I've read through many posts and found some solutions, but the question to begs to ask: Why, when doing a movie with pics from iPhoto, is the final output quality so freaking poor?
My pics are upwards of 9MB apiece originally. I realize they get compressed through the process. I can do a 15 minute video on a DVD, and iDVD burns it to about a third of the disk. Why can't the program (either iMovie or iDVD) calculate the pics and only compress to a certain extent?
When I play a finished product on my Mac, it looks pretty good. But when I convert it through iDVD and burn it to a DVD disc, the output on my HD (yes, I realize THAT'S part of the issue) looks horrible. Aliasing is ridiculous.
I tend to save the files to the highest output and put it on my media player. However, when I want to share the final result with friends on DVD, I'm slightly embarrassed. The quality is just too poor.
I'm open for any input. I realize you can't burn high def to a DVD, but surely there's a better solution. Maybe iMovie 11?
Thanks in advance.

I make slideshow movies using still photos exclusively. Here is the process I use when I want to make a DVD from an iMovie project.
In iMovie I set the ratio to 16:9 and I also crop many of the photos in iPhoto to 16x9 (HD) - this works best for pictures in landscape; it's not good for portrait photos. Also, cropping this way doesn't work for all landscape photos either: sometimes I lose details that make the photo 'good' and so just leave it uncropped.
When the project is finished I choose Share>Export using QuickTime and click "options". In "options" I use the following:
Compression: H.264
Quality: Best
Frame rate: 29.97
Frame reordering: yes
Encoding mode: multi-pass
Dimensions: 1920x1080 (HD)
Scale: Letterbox
I use either iDVD or Roxio Toast to create a DVD.
The issue of the quality of DVDs made from iMovie projects has often been discussed in this forum. The process and settings I use may not be strictly kosher, but I do get good quality DVDs this way and so I stick with them. My projects are usually between 20 to 30 minutes in length.
I hope this helps.
(I haven't tried iMovie 11 yet.)

Poor still photo quality in iMovie 10

Does anyone know how to improve the quality of still photos imported from iphoto to imovie 10. They are fine in iphoto but
become blurry in imovie 10

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 quality in Imovie

I imported a movie via Iphoto( its 16m big). It looks okay in I photo, but in Imovie it has very poor video quality. How can i fix this?

I make slideshow movies using still photos exclusively. Here is the process I use when I want to make a DVD from an iMovie project.
In iMovie I set the ratio to 16:9 and I also crop many of the photos in iPhoto to 16x9 (HD) - this works best for pictures in landscape; it's not good for portrait photos. Also, cropping this way doesn't work for all landscape photos either: sometimes I lose details that make the photo 'good' and so just leave it uncropped.
When the project is finished I choose Share>Export using QuickTime and click "options". In "options" I use the following:
Compression: H.264
Quality: Best
Frame rate: 29.97
Frame reordering: yes
Encoding mode: multi-pass
Dimensions: 1920x1080 (HD)
Scale: Letterbox
I use either iDVD or Roxio Toast to create a DVD.
The issue of the quality of DVDs made from iMovie projects has often been discussed in this forum. The process and settings I use may not be strictly kosher, but I do get good quality DVDs this way and so I stick with them. My projects are usually between 20 to 30 minutes in length.
I hope this helps.
(I haven't tried iMovie 11 yet.)

"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) "

BufferedImage - JPEG & setCompressionQuality(1.0) still poor quality

I am trying to save a JPanel as a JPEG file. I have tried to do this several ways but the image always turns out very poor. I do set the compression quality which makes the file much bigger. However, it always looks horrible except for the buttons and such. Saving as a PNG creates a perfect image though. Is there something I need to change in the metadata or something? I know JPEG is lossy but the JPEG at 1.0 is about 8 times the PNG and still crappy.

I am not sure what the difference is between a photgraph-style image and capturering a JPanel. Photoshop is able to convert the png to a jpeg with the quality intact. Therefore, the format itself is able to maintain that quality. So, I am thinking that I need to do something else in my code or I am doing something wrong. Is there anything else beside setCompression that would affect the quality of the image?

Very poor quality with imovie

hi all
i have a canon hf200 that records mts file. 1920x1080
when i export my movie with imovie the quality of the video is very poor,i export as quicktime movie and i lose a lot of quality.
need i to convert mts file before import it on imovie?
ps:sorry for my english

To increase the quality of a video, one of the things you can do is by instead of exporting the video using Quicktime just select 'export movie...' from the share menu. You can then select what level of quality you want, after selecting what you want to name your movie and where you want to save it.

Help please -My HQ photos are being rendered in very poor quality in iMovie

Hi there
I have a problem I cannot solve in iMovie (HD 6.0.3).
I am making a movie/slideshow of photos using very high quality photos imported from Aperture. I'm finding them incredibly BAD quality when it comes to the rendering of finished product, the most obvious problem being the pixellation (seen as wavy lines) when the Ken Burns effect is used. It looks the worst on a plasma television, which it is being made to watch on.
I have burned it at the highest quality I can find, but there is still no improvement. Can anyone help please? I'm doing this as a gift for my parents, but don't want to send them something of inferior quality.
Thanks!
Carly

if you've burned it to DVD, then its probably a standard definition iMovie project which means that is 480 lines interlaced. it makes no difference how high quality the originals are, they'll still be re-sized down to 480 lines and since its interlaced, that means that you're only ever showing every-other line. and because standard definition alternates between the odd and even numbered lines, you'll probably see lots of shimmering in the highlights. it will look worse when you try to stretch it across a high-definition TV because there's interpolation going on to up-convert the whole thing back to the 720 or 1080 lines of high definition.
in short, you'll never really get super-high quality from a standard definition TV and you'll only get good results on a high-def TV if you keep everything high def (720p or 1080p) throughout the entire workflow. and until Apple updates its software to handle Blue-Ray or HD-DVD authoring, it'll be very expensive to master those kinds of discs!
best of luck,
scott
PowerMac G5 2.5GHz Mac OS X (10.4.8) MacBook Pro 2.0GHz

Why is MPEG4 HD 1920x1080 so poor quality on iMovie 6

I am importing MPEG4 HD 1920x1080 footage to iMovie 08 and it looks amazingly sharp and crisp, but the program continually crashes on me so I have imported the same files to iMovie 6 but they look very average and much lower quality than the same clip in 08.
Any reason behind this?
Scott

Do you have the play back preferences set to similar settings. I use 1/2 screen for full playback in iM08 because of the large file sizes I deal with in converted AVCHD. In iMovie HD6 I use standard, which is not the highest resolution available. You may have iM08 set for a higher playback than iMovieHD.
I assume you just did an import to iMovie HD via browse to the clips from the iM08 events folder, so you are looking at the exact same clips.

Still image quality poor, Help

I posted a similar question last night. This one is more of the same.
Issue: Poor image quality (flickering, Jumping) when viewing stills on my TV only...
I have made 2 test videos. One was made in FCE and one in iMovie8. Both are identical and consist of only 5 still pictures. I added motion to a couple of pics in each test. The video from iMovie looks great on my TV. The video fro FCE looks very poor. The image is jumpy and flickering.
Why does the same movie movie look different depending on the source? What is different? Do I have something set up incorrectly in FCE?
I tried applying the De-interlacing filter and the Flicker filter. I tried all variants of the De-interlace filter, ie odd/even. I have made several exports from FCE trying to get rid of the flicker/jumpy-ness to no avail.....Even the still pics that have no movement flicker a bit from FCE, for example, one of the pictures are of my son holding a dark green fishing rod while standing in a tent. The picture has no movement but the fishing rod and tent poles are flickering, almost like there are lights in them blinking on and off. A similar picture that has movement shows the fishing rod as alternating dark and light lines instead of just a dark green rod. The same pics from the iMovie clip look great. The color is correct and no flickering at all.
To export from FCE I am using Quick Time Movie. From iMovie 8, I am using 'Export Movie' high quality. On each video I then just dropped them into iDVD and viewed on my TV.
I am a new user to FCE and so far I like it much better than iMovie 6 or 8. I have a hard time believing that the still picture quality output form FCE is worse than iMovie. So I must be doing something wrong.
Thank you in advanced for help,
Toshiro

Well I can only assume that there is a difference in the way the data is handled between the 2 apps. I have resolved my issue by not compressing the data while exporting. Unfortunately, my 3 minute video is 7G !!...oh well
...now if I could just get rid of the thin green line at the bottom of the screen during my opening segment it would be great....
Thanks for taking the time to assist
Toshiro

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"

Poor quality still frames

Does anyone know why still frames are such poor quality?
I'm constructing a movie using stills, and if a Ken Burns effect is used, the picture changing to the next photo as soon as the effect finishes can be a little jarring on the eye.
To counteract this, I've been adding a still frame of 1-2 seconds either side of the main Ken Burns adjusted photo to act as a 'cushion' (like you can in Photo to Movie). You can see the difference in quaity in iMovie, so it does of course remain when you have exported to Quicktime.
Is there a better method of doing this than still frames? I notice that the overlap transition helps by hanging on to the end of the previous frame, but it's not ideal.
Any suggestions?
Quicksilver G4 Mac OS X (10.4.6) Programmes in regular use are Freehand, Photoshop, Freeway, Keynote, iMovie, iDV

Karl, I swear you live inside everyone's browser, with a manual the like of which the rest of us have never seen!
As usual, among the quickest to answer on these forums, and absolutely correct.
It worked like a dream - another major headache removed. Many thanks indeed.

Poor quality of still frames

Hello, I have mpeg4 films from which I hope to extract some good quality still photos. Although I am able to create still frames and save them as jpegs the stills are a poorer quality than the film. How can I make the still frame quality as good as the film? Grateful for any help.

Hi Karsten,
Many thanks for your reply. The resolution (dimension?) of one of the mp4 videos is 1280 x 720. I have done several tests and have another at 724 x 576.
You say "screen res is much higher than video res". I'm expecting to get a still photo which is as good in quality as the full screen version - is this not possible? Taking a closer look at the video I now see it's not great quality. With this in mind, if I single out an individual frame - pixelation shows. I suppose when playing the video this pixelation is blurred by movement and the fps. Also I should mention this video has been through a video converter before I could use it in iMovies and the resulting mp4s are nearly the same quality as the original. Thanks for helping a iMovie novice!

Getting poor still image quality in SD project on CS4

hey guys. sorry if you heard this one, but i havent seen anything addressing this.
i am using CS4 to edit a Standard def project and i am running into a problem with still images being choppy and distorted.
I tried all options to produce a better quality, but i get poor quality in the timeline monitor even after i render preview. the ouput
when i export is equally bad.
what i did find out was that if i switched projects in favor of an HD 720 the images are crisp on import and look good.
am i missing something. i assumed the images looked bad because they werent rendered and since i didnt need to render to edit i didnt want to lose the time, so now i'm stuck with those images, or i have to scrap the project and start again in hd and i prefer not to. i would have done it in hd, but the footage i was given was SD. anyways i would appreciate some help. thanks!
btw i've tried to export in both MS DV and WMV
i have tried importing psd png and jpg i have used all these in the past in pro2 with no problem

still images being choppy and distorted.
Can we see a sample?

IPhoto album to iMovie to iDVD, poor quality of projected images

I am preparing a slide show of digital photo images. The finished product shows poor quality images. I am import the images as an album to iMovie, add a few title slides, then export either to media file or directly to iDVD. The results remain unacceptable when projected on a flat panel HD TV. Where am I going wrong?
Marks 3

If you are using the Share ➙ iDVD menu in iMovie, don't. Use the Share ➙ Media Browser menu option and then drag the movie frome the Media/Movies pane in iDVD into the projects menu window. The Share ➙ iDVD route noticibly degrades the resulting movie. What size movie are you sending to iDVD? It should be Medium or Large.
What size images in iPhoto are you using? They shoujld be cropped to the 4:3 size ratio for iDVD before adding to either iMovie or iDVD.
Have you considered creating the slideshow in iDVD by adding the album of photos via the Media/Photos pane in iDVD. I've found I get better results that way. However, there is a 99 slide limit with that workflow.
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OT

Pics still poor quality in iMovie HD

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