Using MPEG-4 as the native iMovie editing format

Why does video quality degrade so horribly when using MPEG-4 as the native format instead of DV? When I import a video, it looks horribly grainy and pixelated. If I do the same thing with native DV type, it doesn't. I'm trying to avoid creating HUGE intermediate DV files when my final output format is going to be MPEG-4 anyway.
I found that if I convert my video to mpeg4 outside of iMovie (using Quicktime or whatever) and than manually place it in my media folder, then iTunes will use the high quality mpeg4 file and allow me to edit as normal, producing acceptable quality results. It just seems to be incapable of doing a high quality import. Technically my way works, but it is very much a hack to get around what seems like an arbitrary limitation of iMovie.
I hope I'm just missing something obvious. Can someone tell me a more straightforward way to do this?
Thanks.

any mpeg format (1,2,4, divx, h263, h264...) isn't meant for editing... it is a playback format, therefore it doesn't store every frame but just the differences..
importing mpeg4/mpeg2 has to be converted, iMHD does so into Apple Intermediate Codec... lots of computation... the computer has to "estimate" the content of every frame... another word is: lossy compression, lossy de-compression...
you can't keep the cake AND eat it.. edit video=investment, in soft- and hardware...
iMovie is meant to work with firewire-connected mini-dv camcorders

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see my reply to Trollus, just posted:
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Hi All,
I'm new to this forum and have had a chance to look around a little bit, but haven't really found an answer to the problem that I'm having.
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David Kaff wrote:
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Video Encoder
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Width and Height: Automatic
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IMovie 09 has trouble importing large video files from my JVC HD-40. I am trying to edit files such as these in 09. What should I do? Would buying iMovie 2011 help? I am shooting AVCHD files instead of the other mpeg2 file format.

Hi,
I am new into the Apple Community. I have a camcorder known as the JVC GZ-HD40 US and I currently am trying to use iMovie 2009 to edit my movies. With my camcorder, I have the choice to use two different video formats: AVCHD or Mpeg2. All my videos are shot in the AVCHD (HD) file format. This camcorder also has a 120 G Hard Drive built into it. When I plug in the camcorder through USB to my MacPro, the Hard Drive of the camcorder shows up as a icon on the desktop. Many of my video clips are at least thirty minutes in length, inside the camcorder. When I try to import in iMovie my video files, it only imports around ten minutes of the video and skips to the end of the clip. I would greatly prefer to use my MacPro desktop to edit movies instead of my Windows 7 computer which seems to work fine. Is there a solution to this problem? Would the new iMovie 2011 application solve this problem? I also have the Final Cut Express to work with, and also, can't get it to work. What should I try doing?

Hi all,
I have the exact same problem. I've just been to Thailand with my girlfriend, and we recorded a lot of stuff with my brand new Sony HD camcorder. And whenever the we ran out of camcorder memory we just emptied everything onto my HP laptop using the supplied Sony software, which produced m2ts files. When we got home, I realized that my Mac Pro/iMovie09 was not able to import this format. What a huge disappointment! Especially considering the fact that I just bought my mac back in March (my first mac ever) only for video editing and music composing (no problems with music composing, however!).
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Best,

No sound in imovie using mpeg videos. HELP!

Hi, im a newbie, so I have lots of questions with sound in imovie.
I have a digital camrea which does the mpeg movie thing.
so when I import the movie into imovie I see the video but I hear no sound.
I know this was covered in some topics, but I being new to this I really didnt understand.
Im hoping that someone here and point me in the right direction.
Thank you.

Hi PK - welcome to the forum!
Increasingly, people with digital still cameras want to import their short movie clips created with that camera. BUT the catch is that these movies are NOT in .dv format. They are MPEGs, and if they are MPEG1 or MPEG2 then they must be converted to DV before they will import into iMovie with the audio able to play.
This conversion usually can be done with a free app. called MPEG StreamClip, but may also need another piece of software called the Apple MPEG2 Playback Component (which costs about $20)..
A search in this forum for those, will give you several threads on the issue!
Look here, for example, for more about the method required:
http://www.sjoki.uta.fi/%7Eshmhav/SVCDon_a_Macintosh.html#edit_convertMPEG
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Can iMovie edit MPEG-2?

I have two MPEG-2 files I create don Windows and want to edit in iMovie 8 on my Intel Mac Pro. The help states it only imports Mpeg-4 but elsewhere the help states it can handle MPEG-2. I can't import them into iMovie so what format would iMovie accept from a Windows PC?
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I can't import them into iMovie so what format would iMovie accept from a Windows PC?
The DV standard would likely be the most "universal" format. Other acceptable formats would be Apple Intermediate Codec, MPEG-4, H.264, Motion-JPEG, etc. As to audio, I would stick with AAC (must use acceptable sampling/data rate combinations), AIFF, Uncompressed, etc.
The help states it only imports Mpeg-4 but elsewhere the help states it can handle MPEG-2.
The camcorder import option will sometimes import MPEG-2 formats if the content can be imaged to appear as HDD, DVD, or Memory Card camcorder content. For most, this proposition is somewhat "iffy" while for others it seems to work fine. My usual preference would be would be to convert the various "muxed" MPEG format and/or M2V/AC3 files manually using an MPEG-based, third-party application or QT Pro for M2V/AIFF elementary streams (or similar frame-to-frame formats).

In making a "highlights" movie, using clips from different imported iMovie events, can I delete the larger iMovie event file from the Events browser and still work w the smaller clips in the Projects browser w/o having the larger files still loaded?

I have sucessfully imported 150 Sony digital 8mm movies (each one hour in length) into iMovie as 150 iMovie events. I have since successfully converted them from their original 13 Gb (.dv) file to an exported smaller 1.3 Gb (.4mv "large file") movie that I am happy with, using the iMovie projects browser. So now I have 150 " .4mv" movies on my internal HD as well as about half of my original raw data " .dv " movies on my internal hard drive.
Due to their large size (over 2 Tb), I do not have all the larger raw data (.dv) files on my 2Tb internal drive, just about half of them. What I want to do now is to create a new project in the Projects browser for each of my kids, and reload, starting with Tape #1, each of these larger files and do a highlights movie for each of my kids, wherein I pick out smaller clips from each 1 hour .dv iMovie event and paste them into the appropriate kid's Highlights project in the Projects browser.
Here's my question: If I load the first 5 large files back onto my internal HD, and paste in various shorter clips into each of my kids' Highlights project, and then if I delete those first 5 large files (they are backed up on 2 other 3Tb external HDs), can I keep doing this (reloading the next 5 large .dv files to work with), and ultimately take each of my kid's Highlights project and export as a .4mv movie EVEN THOUGH the earlier large .dv files are no longer on my internal HD, OR does my iMac need to have all these larger files loaded on my internal HD for me to eventually export each of my kid's Highlights project to a .4mv movie?
I have a 2011 era 27" iMac desktop w 2Tb HD internal and 250 Gb flash drive, and Lion OSX and iMovie 11.

Thanks. I tested it out and you were correct. I loaded 2 .dv movies from my external HD back onto my internal HD, and got them re-imported into iMovie, took a few short clips from each of the 2 iMovie events and pasted them into a new project in the Project Browser. Then I deleted these 2 "source clips" from my internal HD, closed iMovie and then re-opened it and found that iMovie would NOT export the smaller clips for a "highlights" .4mv movie without the "source clips" being available.
I read your link on Quicktime. It talks about mostly trimming, which is what I did with each iMovie event before I took each one as a project to export as a smaller .4mv file. But if I use Quicktime (do I need QT Pro or basic), what advantage is it to me to use QT over iMovie (I must admit I am a novice at iMovie and have never used QT or QT Pro as a tool)? Will it then convert any edits I make to a .m4v movie or do I need iMovie to do that?
Does QT allow trimming multiple segments out of a movie during one edit session, or can you only do 1 at a time? By that I mean that, for example, when I use Sonys Picture Motion Browser for my .mts movies, you can only set one Start and one End point for each edit/trim you do: it does not allow you to set multiple Start Stop points like iMovie allows in its Event or Project browser. You can only do one "trim" at a time, save it and then reopen to do another trim. not very useful.

I just installed the latest iMovie 10.0.2. Please don't say "look at the help menu" - it doesn't help. This is radically different than the version I'd been using. For starters it automatically converts to mp4 rather than .mov - that's my 1st question

Sorry for the long headline - I'm new to the support community and thought that was the post! I've been happily using my old version of iMovie - I don't even know the number - I guess it was 11? I just installed the most recent 10.0.2 and it is radically different from what I've been using. For starters, whereas my uploaded video used to be in the lower section, and I would edit up above, now it's reversed. Whereas I used to click on the transitions and drag a blur or whatever to my movie right while I was editing, now it's on a different screen. And the easy old Export file button is gone, where you could choose setting, file size, export as Quicktime movie - all gone - now it converts to mp4 and I STILL can't figure out how to get it back to .mov
Please don't say "read the Help manual" - I tried - there's nothing there about any of this. And by the way, I'm not a techie - I taught myself what I needed to know about the old iMovie and am now lost so please no snarks. I would appreciate any help.

Select in browser your movie, click Export on toolbar, choose iTunes, QT etc. then choose size of your file in opening window. And then click Export in this window.

How to find out what is using the native heap of a process running a JVM?

Hello,
I am not sure where to post this question so I am starting here.
I am troubleshooting a Java application using some native calls (32 bits Java running on Solaris 10). The size of the process (as reported by prstat) is slowly increasing day after day.
The size of the 'Java heap' is fixed at the start (-Xms and -Xmx are set to the same value on the command line when launching the Java app) and the GC is workling fine. No memory complaints from the Java side of the application.
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DCBF6000 40K rw--R [ stack tid=161 ]
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Many parts of the process allocate memory in the native heap. The JVM itself, the native calls made to a C++ library part of our Java application and maybe also some 3rd party software.
I would like to know what is the best way to find out what is consuming more and more memory in the native heap. I started looking a DTraces but I am new to this. I also thought maybe the Solaris Perftools might be of use but I never used them. Before plunging into a tool more or less blindly, I am asking for advices on how to tackle this issue. Can someone recommend a tool/method to see what is allocated in the heap?
Regards,
Stéphan
Edited by: StephanDupont on Sep 22, 2009 8:47 AM

After googling a lot I managed to run my application with libumem, generated a core file and succeeded to find some leak with mdb even if ::findleak reported nothing.
Does anyone knows if the ::findleak (you need libumem and mdb) is supposed to find leak in the native part of the memory and a Java application using the JNI interface?
Regards,
Stéphan

Using MPEG-4 as the native iMovie editing format

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