Poor quality of iSight in iMovie

I don't get this, in photo booth the quality of what the iSight cam shows me is fine. Likewise with quicktime pro. Yet open up iMovie and click the cam button and it's all dark/black, I got to turn on multiple lights to show up anything in the window and it still looks like I'm in a cave. Not to mention it's all grainy, what's with the grainy picture quality. Are others getting a dark and grainy picture on iSight when used thru iMovie?

Hello addmony
My external iSight works fine with iMovie 7 (the one in iLife '08).
Have you by chance changed your Video Adjustments settings?
If settings is not the problem, your iMovie preferences file may have become corrupted. Quit all applications. Then throw away the iMovie 7 Preferences file (com.apple.iMovie7.plist) from your Home (user) / Library / Preferences folder.
A new preferences file will be generated when you restart iMovie to test whether it works now, but you will need to reset any preference settings you want different from the default values.
If you need more help, please tell us which Mac you are using when you post back.
EZ Jim
PowerBook 1.67 GHz w/Mac OS X (10.4.11) G5 DP 1.8 w/Mac OS X (10.5.2) External iSight

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Hi thanks for the response
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mantralightroom wrote:
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As usual, among the quickest to answer on these forums, and absolutely correct.
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Why poor quality AIC & Apple ProRes HQ video when compared to original video files!

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My original RAW files are all 1920x1080 60i and are MTS files from the HF S10 and Mov files from the 7D. Even the original RAW Mov files produced from the 7D don't look as good on my Mac as they do on my PC. I even took a SD card with the original files down to the local Apple store to see how they look on a Macbook Pro and they still don't look like the originals on my PC. Also, all my comparisons are being done side by side on two 24" Apple cinema displays at full size (1920x1080) that are calibrated. What am I doing wrong and why the loss in quality? Any ideas as to why the quality is just so-so when compared to the originals would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

The thing that is wrong is that you are judging the quality of VIDEO on COMPUTER monitors. Properly calibrated or no...this is not how you do it. Calibration for computer monitors sets them right for PHOTOSHOP and color, not VIDEO and proper monitoring. Only getting a signal to a broadcast VIDEO monitor, or HDTV, will show you what you really have. And for that you need an HD input/output device or capture card...and the HDTV or HD monitor.
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When I export from iMovie6 any moving image is very poor quality. I am using a Sony HDR-HC1 and trying to export at the highest possible settings.
When the image is still the quality is very good, but if anything moves the image goes "wobbly" and "jigsaw" like. Panning shots are hopeless and anyone walking in the shot goes wobbly.
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Your description of the problem - a 'comb' effect - sounds as if the "fields" which make up the resultant picture have been put together in reverse.
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However ..you said in your first post that "..I am using a Sony HDR-HC1 and trying to export at the highest possible settings.."
This is an HDV camcorder, and you didn't say if the original footage which you shot was HDV or normal DV. (HDV is recorded differently from normal DV, as it's recorded in a more compressed format, and it has to be automatically 'unscrambled' by Apple's Intermediate Codec while you're importing it into iMovie HD.)
It seems as if somewhere along the chain of importing>editing>exporting, the fields are being reversed, so that you get this jumpiness on replay when QuickTime tries to deliver a "highest quality" interleaved replay of both fields:
Ah ..sudden thought: you mentioned that you exported thro' iDVD: "..I have used iDVD by dropping it into a DVD theme and it seems to work ok, although the playback is a little jumpy, not quite as good I would have expected.."
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I must be doing something stupid: Very poor quality DVD rendering!

I am new to Apple products and after trolling this forum, I was able to create a DVD using iDVD on my Mac mini Core Duo - 2Ghz model. But, the video is of very poor quality (compression artifacts). I am lookging for guidance to creating a better video quality. But first, let me give you some background...
I have created enough DVDs for my home videos captured both from my S-VHS camcorder and min-DV camcorders (both PAL and NTSC) using Pinnacle Studio (buggiest software in the world) and Adobe Premiere Elements under Windows. I have clear expectation of video quality and understand the quality differences between various standards.
I have a fairly new toy - Canon Powershot TX1 digital camera which is an amazing compact camera that shoots 720p video @ 30fps and stores them in MJPEG format. Very good optics (10x optical image stabilized zoom). The only con is that it has very poor low light shooting ability.
The steps I took to create this DVD...
1. Import the .avi and .jpeg files from my camera into iPhoto library.
2. Use iMovie (all part of iLife'08) to stitch the avi clips and also some of jpegs. Added transitions, titles and music in iMovie.
3. Also, added some of my old low resolution avi files (from my older Canon camera - probably in 640x480 resolution).
3. Exported it in the largest file mode (960x540) which created a 1.8GB file.
4. Opened this movie file in Garageband and added the Chapter markers.
5. Shared it with iDVD which automatically launched iDVD and showed the chapters in very nice scene selections menus.
6. Invoked the Burn menu to burn the movie into a DVD using iDVD.
Am I using the right methodology (I want the chapters)? I also observed that an earlier project which was pure 15 minutes of 720p content created a 4.7GB size exported file from iMovie whereas this current project has 51min of avi (of which about 10min is low res and the rest is in 720p format) and 12min of still photos produced a 1.8GB file when exported. This clearly tells me that the exported file is of poor quality. Why did that happen? Was it because I mixed the content and included low res videos?
I should probably try creating a DVD from the pure 720p content and see how that looks.
Any pointers would be a great help. BTW, the mac mini, iPhoto and iMovie forums are just awesome. The quality of posts and responses is very high.

Thanks a lot, F Shippey.
I exported it as a .dv file and then I was able to produce the DVD correctly with the Revolution theme and 11 chapters. I haven't done any editing any clips yet in iMovie. In most cases, I will not need to do that in most cases as the Canon TX1 creates individual avi clips every time I record and stop a recording. Having used a camcorder for over a decade now, I know how silly most of the recordings are.
I will be rendering most of my videos as h.264 so that I can use the mac mini as a media server instead of using DVDs. I have to rip my own DVDs as h.264 soon (back to handbrake).
PS: While creating my first DVD in OS X + iLife'08 tools, I noticed the following bugs:
1. The clips disappear from the display in the editing window when the project becomes large and I had to zoom in and out to make them reappear. I verified that I wasn't viewing past the end of the last clip. If I hover the mouse in the blank window, it will show the clip in the preview window on the right.
2. I had 11 chapters marked in Garageband and then I shared it with iDVD, it created two pages of scene selections with 6 chapters in each page. In the 2nd page, it added a random window (unconnected) for the 12th chapter that I didn't have. I didn't check for that and so my finished DVD has this weird 12th chapter with a copied moving clip in the window, but when selected, it doesn't do anything.
These two bugs are way few compared to what Pinnacle Studio threw at me.
Message was edited by: new2appletv

Poor quality of iSight in iMovie

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