You shoot 24p, 25p, 30p but iMove 09 treats it as interlace! Why?

Question

If your HD camcorder can shoot “1080p25” (progressive 25fps) or “1080p30” (progressive 30fps), of course you want to shoot using these frame rates. The Canon HV40 and Canon HF S11 are examples of HD camcorders that can shoot progressive video at 25fps (in PAL regions) or at 30fps (in NTSC regions) in addition to “1080i50” or “1080i60.” They can also shoot 24fps.
When you shoot 1080p24, 1080p25, or 1080p30, in most cases progressive video is recorded as interlace video. Both 1080p24 and 1080p30 are recorded as 1080i60 while 1080p25 is recorded as 1080i50.
When iMovie 09 imports this video, it will treat this progressive video as interlaced HD. Unfortunately, iMovie treats interlaced HD badly. If you Stabilize a clip, employ a PIP or Crop, add a Ken Burns effect to a video clip, or use a Wipe or Pseudo-3D transition (such as Cube)—iMovie on-the-fly converts your 1080-line video to 540p (960x540) video. Therefore, all 1080i clips in your movie will lose up to 35% vertical resolution and up to 40% horizontal resolution. This loss of resolution will occur even if you add only one of these effects.
But, what if iMovie didn't do this?
What if iMovie correctly saw progressive HD as progressive HD -- not interlaced HD? This would allow all scaling FX to be used. Moreover, because you ARE shooting progressive HD, NO scaling artifacts would be introduced!
Would this be a benefit to HDV and AVCHD 1080i shooters?
Absolutely! Especially if all this could accomplished without wasting time and image quality recompressing your video.

Answer 1

The Pana 300 is a great camcorder, but I wish it shot 30p. If you want a Cine look you'll have to shoot 24fps rather than the easier to use 30fps.
Anyway, about removing pulldown:
1) You CAN remove 2-3 pulldown. But, it requires a recompresion from AIC to AIC after your clips' AVCHD is converted by iMovie to AIC. This would provide real 1080p24. I call this "TRUE 1080P." But, with a MacBook this might take too long. And, you lose a generation of quality!
2) A better solution is to get iMovie to treat your video as though it has no pulldown and is progressive. I call this "FALSE 1080P" because once 2-3 pulldown is added during recording, the video has BECOME interlaced. (I'll explain about this in my other thread on dealing with 1080i50 and 1080i60.)
PS: The reason I prefer to shoot 1080p30 is because then the goal is to get iMovie to treat 25p/30p video as though it were progressive. I call this "TRUE 1080P" because it really IS progressive.
We know what it is, but iMovie doesn't. And, how can iM since it is recorded as 1080i50 and 1080i60. It's too bad Canon and Panasonic record 25p/30p as interlaced. The neat thing about TRUE 1080P is that after editing as progressive you can export as 1080i or 720p. And, no matter what FX you use you'll never get scaling artifacts!