Saving full quality HD projects in H.264

Hello,
I'm new to the forum been using a Mac and iMovie for about 5 years. Anyway I recently bought a Sanyo HD700 Vid cam which records onto an SD card in H.264 720p HD video. What I would like to be able to do but have yet to figure out is save my iMovie projects in full HD quality onto an external HD to view via Windows Media Center or Xbox 360 dashboard. I see no need to burn a DVD anymore as my entire home is digital and wired. Is there anybody else doing this and if so could you please help.
Thanks,
Ben

if you download the software called connect360, you can view your saved movies on your xbox. it's seamless and fairly easy. Using Imovie, I had to save the file using quicktime, advanced and save in the highest quality before HD, using mpeg4 compression and aac audio. I did not get the HD to work, it saved it choppy. I'm not sure if that's because my mac is 2yrs old, but i have 1080 stuff already edited on my computer and that works fine.

Similar Messages

Exporting a full quality MPEG-4 in FCP?

i did a video for someone and they want the full quality video as an h.264/MPEG-4. Can i do this in FCP? I thought the way to get a full quality vid in FCP was to go to file export quicktime movie... So wouldnt the full quality vid be a .mov? - can i get it as a h.264/mpeg-4 while keeping it full quality?
also a 3 minute video doing this is a little over 2 gigs. is there a send it website that can handle files this large?

A .mov file is just a container...something to tell the computer "this is a quicktime movie." It can any one of a DOZEN or more codecs...including H.264 and MPEG-4, and ProRes and DVCPRO HD. And yes, you can export a full sized H.264. Meaning 1920x1080, or 1280x720...but it will be compressed from whatever format you have it as now. Converting anything to another format will be compressing it. FULL QUALITY means uncompressed...so no, you can't have a FULL QUALITY compressed file type. But, it will be full sized. And the compression of h.264 is darn good.
As for sending the file, you can use YouSendIt if you pay a fee. Or get an FTP site....a server.
Shane

Ouicktime problem saving to full quality

Hi everyone
I am having a problem with saving a 26gb film to full quality on quicktime (as thats the default when you click on full quality. It starts to save in full quality but after 10mins I receive this message.
*Please make sure that your project disk has write permission, and that you have enough disk space. (Error -1309)*,
The only thing that I did that may have produced this message is that I changed the name of the film whilst still a imovie file. The project does have write permission i.e. when I got to further information on the file i have permission to read and write. and it's not locked. Also the files are saved in a external hard drive but this has not created a problem before as I have used the full quality before without this problem.
Would grateful for any insight.
Clifford.

Make sure the external drive is properly formatted.
Disk Utility can be used to format the drive (erases all data currently on it).

Export in Full Quality??

With iMovie '06, all I had to do was click on "Full Quality" when exporting to have the video export in the same quality that it had been in as I was working on it. I can't find any way to do that with iMovie '11. I've tried Export Medium & Export Large, Export to Quicktime Broadband High as well as the default option, and every time the final video comes out fuzzy and not nearly as clear as the project I had been working on. The material is not in HD, but nevertheless the final exported product is always much lower quality than what it should be.
Someone please tell me there's a way to export my video without vastly reducing the video quality. Thanks

Hi
The problem is - What do You mean by Full Quality. It's very different if Your original material is
• miniDV tape PAL or NTSC refered to as DV and 25 or 29.97fps
• DVPRO
• DV-HD
• DV Widescreen (16x9)
• HDV 1080i
• HDV 720p
• MPEG-4
• iSight
• MPEG-2 from Cameras that records on DVD or miniDVD - some versions are OK
• .mov
• .avi
• AVCHD (= H.264)
And - where You aim Your movie
• as a DVD
• YouTube
• AppleTV
• else
IF You are as Me in miniDV tape age and aiming to do a DVD as result.
Then and Only Then - iMovie'08 or 09 or 11 - are not the tools to USE as they all discard every second line
in interlaced video on export - How-ever You trie to do it. Not Possibly.
Tools to use are
• iMovie up to HD6
• FinalCut any version Express or Pro
To re-install iMovie HD6 - You need the iLife 6 Disks or the one that Came with Your old Mac.
From here You must seek the forum to figure out exact steps - Has been delivered several times during the Years.
As I get it iMovie'11 has to be removed first - then iMovie HD6 installed then put application into a folder
named iMovie Previous versions - Then iMovie'11 can be re-installed.
Yours Bengt W

How do I export Full Quality from iMovie 11?

Basically, I want to export a version in as high a quality as possible for archive purposes. So if in the future, I need to convert to as-yet-undeveloped file types, I have as close to the (edited) source as possible. iMovieHD had a "Full Quality" setting, but I don't find that in iMovie 11. The closest I've found is Apple Intermediate codec (which is what iMovieHD seems to have saved them as when set to Full)

It creates a .dv file is the footage is standard def. The HD projects (1080i) saved as .mov files, intermediate codec. I think even though I imported the footage at "full", as soon as I added transitions, it seems to have down-converted to "large". So none of my export options deliver anything bigger than 960x540. I guess transitions force that?

Questions about exporting to full quality?

Hey there -
I just wanted to make sure that if I want to give my friend back a DV file from the converted tape that I choose Export, then Full Quality? I know that creates one file vs individual clips but her tape was one long one, I did chapter markers for the dvd and make splits but I don't think she wants those (some are arbitrary, e.g. the tape was long than an hour so iMovie HD split it into two clips). So, I just want to be sure that that's the right choice for exporting?
And, on that, does that remove transitions or keep them?
Lastly, there is a weird screen in QuickTime in the resulting file. It's a colorblock screen of sorts - a whole punch of pixels (big TV ones, not sure what they are called) in a bunch of colors. It's happening RIGHT at the end of the footage - not thrilled about it but it is the DV file, I guess. Depending on answer to above, I may at least extend the end transition so it doesn't make future editing difficult. Any way to eliminate it from happening?
Thanks for your help -
Alexa

+You should be able to move the cursor frame-by-frame with the arrow keys to get to the precise 'cut' point.+
I know - it's strange but I lost a few seconds of just black screen at the end - I even went back and checked against the actual movie. At any rate, I'm slicing them off carefully and now am adding just a few seconds of still time at the end so it's not an issue.
+What exactly is it that your friends want to do with the digitized footage? I recommend that you make them a DVD of the edited movie, and then export the movie back to the camcorder so they also have a digital mini DV tape of it. This way, they can view the DVD to see their movie and show to others, but they also have a backup on tape.+
Ah, let's see - somehow I've agreed to convert a bag full of VHSC and VHS tapes (and hours and hours of my life for footage that's not even my family!) At any rate, I am giving them the deluxe end product - a customized movie with smoother transitions and chapters, a customized DVD menu with images and chapters (and music, if it fits) and a customized case and printed DVD (Taiyo Yuden printed Watershield DVD). Yes, the works. So, then I told them to buy a external HDD and I would move the resulting DV files to it so they would have them should the ever want to use the footage again (e.g. make an "anniversary" montage that pulls in just clips from their wedding, or a wedding montage for their kids that includes the baby footage that I digitized.) So, they have the VHSC and VHS originals, they'll have the movie on DVD and they were going to have the DV files on a hard drive of the appropriate size. That was my recommendation since the problem was that the tapes sat around in the first place - they aren't going to convert them without help. But, if that's the "best" option for longer-lasting backup, I can offer it to them.
+If this were for your use, I would recommend that you also create a disk image of the iDVD project as backup. ...Because the disk image file is self-contained, you can safely delete the iMovie and iDVD projects without losing the ability to burn DVDs of the iDVD project that is now saved as the disk image. You use Disk Utility (or Toast if you have it) to burn the actual DVD disk.+
That is the best advice I could have received! I hadn't really figured out what I was going to do with the actual iMovie and iDVD projects after I was finished. I was reluctant to delete b/c - ahem - they've come back to me after 2 months of the last project and asked for another copy!!! But, I've already added one external for this, I can't house their memories in various forms forever. So, if I do the disk image, I'll retain the ability to make the disk - that's exactly what I need. I've already been caught once by the dreaded "you've updated the move file" bug once, simply because I had opened the original iMovie project - and I had to build the whole DVD again (and it had 24 chapters!)
Thanks so much for the counsel on the disk image - I had heard about it but just wasn't sure how I should directly apply it to these projects.
Appreciate it!
Alexa
Message was edited by: akcorcoran

Overlap transitions choppy after exporting 'Full Quality' QuickTime

I have a movie created with images and music, no video. I used the overlap transition between each image. All images have a slight Ken Burns effect. Then I exported to Full Quality Quicktime to bring into iDVD. I originally tried to export right to iDVD and the resolution was horrible but the transition were fine. Now I have great resolution but the transition is choppy. It's almost like the frames per second dropped during the transition. Don't know what to do to fix it.

I have solved ALL my issues!! At least with this project. I had 3 issues with this project: low res on final output, flickering in the images while using Ken Burns effect and not so smooth transition issues.
I changed my video format to HDV 1080i. I was able to use my lower res untouched images (before I put a .6 Gaussian blur effect on the images to reduce the amount of flickering and saved them as high res TIFFs). I did have to change to widescreen format, but I think my client will see that as a cool factor. I'm so happy I could cry!!! It took me a week to get it figured out, but I learned A LOT about iMovie during that time. Now I have a bunch of project ideas flying through my head. I'm going to enjoy my happy moment for a little while. I still do not know why iMovie was doing the weird transition thing in the iSight format. I think I'll stick with the HDV.
Thanks for the help!
Serena

"Full Quality" Export looks rubbish

I've created a slide show, with some transitions and text, about 3 minutes long.
It looks and plays fine when playing in full screen mode from iMovie but when exported to Quicktime it losses soo much quality, im using the full quality setting but it looks more like poor video streaming when played back.
Is there a solution to this or do i just need to open iMovie and play it through that? Idealy i want to be able to playback via "front row" so i can show off to friends and family. Is quicktime the only solution or can FR play multiple formats?
Kev.
MacBook, White, 2Ghz Mac OS X (10.4.6)

There's a new user preference in QuickTime 7 to automatically play movies with the high quality display enabled, if possible. Be sure to set that QT Player preference.
This will not affect the quality when played on other Macs, however.
Full Quality movies aren't intended to be shared with others. They are called Full Quality because they contain all the original source material of the iMovie project in the native DV format. They are large, cumbersome, and difficult for the computer to play. Which is why, historically, the display quality is reduced when played in QuickTime Player. That allows the movie will play smoothly.
You might try exporting the iMovie project to QuickTime using Expert Settings. Configure the export to use the H.264 codec. It delivers very high quality with far less data than a Full Quality movie.
Karl

Full Quality DV with Chapters

Hello,
I know that in iMovie HD when you export, chapter marks are maintained EXCEPT when you export to full quality DV. Most of the time, this is OK because I can just use the reference movie for iDVD or whatever else I need.
For this project I'm working on, though, several (20) of the clips are very short segments of much longer clips. The problem with using the reference movie approach is that I have to keep around all these huge files for a few seconds here and there.
Is there any way I can get a DV .mov (I know this isn't the same as a DV stream) that just contains the portions of the clips in my movie and retains the chapter markings? Everything I try seems to not work. I even tried copying and pasting into a new movie in QTPro (copies, but no chapters) and saving as self-contained (makes a HUGE file -- 178 gigs for around 28 minutes of DV -- which means it's including all of the stuff that's not in the movie.)
Any thoughts?
Thanks.

That's exactly the problem. When I open that file and
do a Save As, I get a file that is way too big to
account for the length of the movie. It appears to be
including all of the clips I started from instead of
just the parts that are included in my movie.
I don't believe you understood my suggestion. I'm not suggesting you do a Save As of the iMovie project. That will do exactly like you say, make a duplicate of the entire iMovie project.
Instead, try using QuickTime Pro to do a Save As of the QuickTime reference movie for iDVD that iMovie stores inside the Cache folder of the project package. That Save As will have an entirely different result.
Karl

Is there something inbetween CD-ROM and FULL QUALITY??

When it's time to share my movie, is there something inbetween CD-ROM and FULL QUALITY? CD-ROM is 163 MB and FULL QUALITY is 6 GB. I know I can choose EXPERT SETTINGS, but I always get a huge file and would like to know if anyone out there knows of a good setting in Expert Setting that isn't as big as FULL QUALITY but is better than the CD-ROM setting.
Thanks!@

You don't want viewers trying to download a 6GB file. It's (.dv) not for Web use.
You would probably be best with a 320X240 .mov file as they will fit the page content of a blog better than a 640X480 size and will also be about 4 times smaller in file size.
Make a one minute "Full Quality QuickTime" (.dv) from your current Project. Use a scene that has medium amount of video motion.
Use that .dv file in a new "test" iMovie Project.
Export using Expert Settings
Choose Movie to QuickTime Movie
Click the "Options" button and choose H.264 Video codec and AAC audio
Adjust the data rate and the audio quality and export 4 different files using slightly different settings
Compare these new files using QuickTime Player
You'll quickly figure out what settings work best for your file. Compare file size to video and audio quality. Web viewers are used to low quality video (YouTube as proof) and really like smaller file sizes over quality.
You could continue testing using MPEG-4 Video codec (instead of H.264) as it has a higher installed user base so more viewers could view your file.

Use secondary screen as in iMovie 09/export full quality

1. Is it possible to use a secondary screen to view the video preview of the video I'm working on a secondary screen, while viewing the time line and the rest of the tools on my laptops internal screen as you can in iMovie 09?
2. When exporting in full quality is it really full quality as on the miniDV-tape or has iMovie made any changes to the video or compressed it in any way?

Hi
1. Second monitor on Mac port - Don't know I do like this.
• connect Camera (miniDV tape) or A/D box to FireWire
• connect TV or referens monitor to analog out on Camera
• in iMovie pref set Playback via Camera
Now I see in realtime quality, color and audio as the result will be.
2. Well. All authority says that it's the same - but when I tested and from
original saved out a frame as .jpg then Export as full QT quality.
Import this into iMovie and then saved out same frame -
I get a noticable difference. A diagonal line is fairly good in photo from original
and a stair case on the QT exported version.
Most probably I'm doing something wrong. Never figured out what.
Yours Bengt W

Video freezes when exporting to Full Quality

[Background: I've been working on a video project in iMovie HD that I'm doing in pieces - exporting each section of the video at full quality when it's done, so that later I can put them all together in a new project.]
Lately I've been having major problems exporting to full quality Quicktime files. The exported video freezes a few frames in, though the audio continues to play normally. This does not happen if I save it to a smaller quality, say, Web Streaming.
I'm having trouble seeing a pattern in how/why/when this happens, too. I have successfully exported movies to full quality both before and after movies that export incorrectly. The first project that had this happen, I decided to reassemble bit by bit to find out if something specific was causing the problem. Turns out that Full Quality exporting started having this problem if I had added titles. After jumping through something like 50 hoops - exporting little pieces, reimporting, exporting just the titles, etc., etc - I managed to work around the issue. Bit of a headache but all seemed to be well.
BUT, the frozen video problem soon happened again. The next time I had this trouble exporting, there were no titles in the project at all, and the problem instead occurred once I added music. So there does not seem to be a pattern within iMovie itself. This makes me think it's either a Quicktime problem or something to do with my computer itself. I have 2GB of memory, 37GB of space left on my hard drive, and I'm running Quicktime 7.4.1 and iMovie HD 6.0.4.
Please help! I'm on a bit of a deadline, too. This is driving me crazy!

Thanks Matt. I am in the same boat as many people have obviously been in - trying to burn a DVD to a film fest deadline of tomorrow, and after 4 hours of trying to make a disk image, getting 'error during burn'.
I have one question.
a) In imovie, I clicked the 'create iDVD' button to create this project - which has problems burning.
b) Now if I simply try to drag that .mov file into the iDVD pane as you suggest, is that identical to what I have done in a) - in that we're operating with the same basic animal. Of so
c) I should try the process of exporting to .dv, reimporting to new imovie, redoing chapter markers and THEN dragging the package .mov to the iDVD pane - hoping that chapter markers are preserved.
Oh ... someone said one should try to save the .mov as a sel contained file. is that necessary?
Thank you for sitting in front of you Mac!

Share iMovie Full Quality lost option

I'm trying to share an iMovie project to iDVD and full quality is not an option. I chose share: Media Browser, Large. All my text is now blurry in iDVD and my photo quality is real fuzzy. How do I get the quality I have in iMovie into iDvd? I see no options. Help!

Another thing is that you must get your video into your project in a Loss Less format. IMove 8 defaults to an .mp4 which is a compressed format. I don't know how to set it to dv or a Loss Less format like in IMovie 6. I would hope there is a way, please post if you find out. Unless you Project is created with a Loss Less / dv format professional or not you DVD will be degraded.

Full Quality Exporting Problem...

I made a movie that is roughly around 12 gigs of memory. I exported the movie to CD Quality first so that it can be uploaded to youtube. The problem I noticed with the CD Quality, is that some of the frames jump a bit. However the movie plays fine...
When I try to export the project to Full Qaulity, the movie seems to export faster than it does CD Quality, roughly taking about 45 seconds fully to complete itself...
When I open the full quality movie, the first movie clip from the project plays, but then freezes at the beginning of the second one...
Is it freezing because the project is too big? Or is it something else???
In any case, how I can fix this so I can have a working full quality movie???
(By the way, I have iMovie HD)
Message was edited by: stringcheese

Actually, I figured out the problem...Apparently, every movie clip that I had changed the speed to (slowed down or sped up) froze the video...
Is there any way to fix this???

"Full Quality" = Poor quality text?

I am making a DVD, and am using video that is exported from iMovie HD. When I chose "full-quality" for the export, and view it when it is done, the quality (compared to how it looks in iMovie) is crap. It is especially noticeable in the "title slides" where there is just white text over a black background.
In my opinion, it definitely doesn't look like "full quality". What am I to do?

What I don't get, is that when I try to do the "share
to iDVD" feature, it opens a completely new project.
I already had one started, but it won't let me share
into that one. What do I do?
To add an iMovie project to an existing iDVD project, drag the iMovie project into the iDVD window. That is how we routinely include multiple iMovie projects on a single DVD.
As Lennart said, there's no good reason to export the iMovie project to a Full Quality movie you send to iDVD. In fact, it can cause problems. Your DVD won't contain the chapters you created in iMovie, for example.
When you Share an iMovie project to iDVD, or drag the iMovie project into the iDVD window, iDVD grabs a special movie iMovie stores for it inside the iMovie project package. The movie is in the package's Shared Movies > iDVD folder. To look inside the package, Control-click on the iMovie project and choose "Show Package Contents" from the popUp menu. (No need to go there unless you're interested. Don't change anything.)
The Full Quality movie you created is confusing you, for it's a confusing thing. iMovie calls it that not because it plays the movie with great clarity, but because it retains all the quality of the iMovie project. Exporting to a Full Quality movie hands us a movie we can import to another project with no loss of quality. Each type of iMovie project has its own type of Full Quality movie, following the movie format of the exporting project. There's never any loss of quality.
Changing the playback features of a DV movie in QuickTime Player has no effect on the quality of the movie itself or on the quality of a DVD you burn of the movie. It only affects playback quality in QuickTime Player itself.
QuickTime has been around a long time. On yesterday's slow computers, we would lower the playback quality on (huge) DV movies so we could play them more smoothly.
Note that if you have QuickTime Pro, you can set your QT Player preferences to play DV movies with high quality by default.
Karl

Saving full quality HD projects in H.264

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