Slideshow in iMovie - images w/movement don't look as good as in iPhoto

Question

I love iPhoto with the Ken Burns effect, but I had problems that when an image would dissolve up, the position would be in an undesirable spot (image might be with a person's head cut off). I tried working around the problem by giving the images very very wide black borders. But this didn't help. Also, when I've burned an iPhoto slideshow to a DVD using iDVD, the image quality fell off (perhaps because TVs aren't as good as my monitor).
By going to iMovie it was great to get all the controls I wanted, BUT I find the image quality not as good, even on my HD Cinema Display. Is this too be expected? I tried changing the frame rate, but that hasn't helped. I was concerned that it might be because the image file size was too large, but I have ruled that out (I think).
I created a quicktime movie and still the images don't look nearly as good as they do in iPhoto with Ken Burns effect (so it's not about the movement and my screen resolution and refresh rate - unless iMovies is changing things).
I would so greatly appreciate any information on this. Whether it is to confirm that, yes - through I photo, slideshow images look better. Or, to say "iMovie slideshow images should look great - you need to change these settings....."
Thanks so much fo your help, Leo
Powermac G5   Mac OS X (10.4.1)  

Answer 1

I'm not sure, but maybe you hit on something I'm
doing wrong. I've not taken any care in how I've
been getting images into iMovie. I've taken in
images through the clips section and I've taken it
through an ALBUM in iPhoto. Are you saying I need to
have the images in a slide show in iphoto so that I
can import them from there with Ken Burns on - that
does something to the images!? Wow.
Note that the Ken Burns Effect in iPhoto has nothing whatever to do with the Ken Burns Effect in iMovie. Configuring the KBE in iPhoto affects ONLY that iPhoto slideshow or one of its slide, not the iPhoto images you import to iMovie. (Actually, slides in iPhoto slideshow slides are never imported to iMovie, only the images in non-slideshow albums.)
As photos are imported into iMovie the iMovie KBE is applied to those images using the KBE settings you've configured in iMovie.
ALSO - I have to be honest - I never knew that Ken
Burns was customizable! If this is the case, doesn't
it mean that KB doesn't have too be random. Can't I
establish start and end points for the whole show and
it will be repeatable?!
Yes, making them all the same is possible, but variety is the spice of life, so you probably don't want all slides of the iPhoto slideshow to look the same. I find the random KBE in iPhoto surprisingly effective.
It's also surprisingly easy to spot the slides where it's probably going to point at someone's shoes or do something that looks ridiculous. Configure those manually.
I suppose the big draw back of so carefully
programming a slideshow in iPhoto is that you can't
save it to a disc.
Actually, you CAN save it to disk. Export the slideshow to iDVD and iDVD puts a copy of your slideshow — as a MOVIE — in the Movies folder. You can import that movie to iMovie if you want. Or use QuickTime Pro to export it in a compressed format to share with friends.
But before I give up on iMovie (and the hours and
hours I've spent in making this show), perhaps I'm
missing a good way of saving the project. I have
made an iMovie project which plays in iMovie and is
labeled as DV-NTSC and I've created a quicktime .mov.
Is there a better option? You say "The DV is better
than you see displayed in iMovie". So is there a
way I should play this DV project in another
application that would be better?
You can export the iMovie project to any kind of QuickTime movie you want, large, small or anything in between. High quality, low quality or whatever.
Thanks so much for your help. This has been great
help.
You're welcome. Good luck on your project.
Karl