04-15-2011, 09:55 AM

I made a sweet montage in iMovie for an upcoming family event. It's about 11.5 minutes long and includes photos and video footage. I need to know the best way to save this as a movie since it will be shown on a big screen in a banquet hall (through a projector connected to a mac laptop). Can someone advise me on the best way to save this and burn it as a dvd? Should I just click iDVD and let it do it automatically or should i click export movie and then burn it to a dvd? Any suggestions and details on how to save it (widescreen vs regular) are greatly appreciated.

04-16-2011, 03:32 AM

Widescreen or standard should be decided based on what the video was recorded in. If it was recorded in standard it would look stretched if you tried to make it widescreen.

Is the laptop the same as the one you used to make it with? Why not make it a video file and just play it with quicktime or whatever. Are you trying to keep it playing over and over like a slideshow or just play it once for an introduction?

04-16-2011, 09:02 AM

thank you for getting back with me. I would think the video, since it is old footage, is not widescreen. I am noticing that one bit of footage, though I can see my son's head in the original, is cut off in the clip I have in my montage. I wonder if the reason has something to do with a setting?? Any ideas?

This is a play once 11 minutes montage that will be played on a mac laptop. I am producing it on an iMac.

04-16-2011, 12:47 PM

If the ratio was different and you converted it to widescreen or panoramic that could happen. I am not really to familiar with the operation of Imovie yet as I am a recent switcher. I can not really give you program advice on where to look for these settings in that application. The differences are pretty universal though ( Program to Program )as far as aspect ratio is concerned.

The problem is you most likely have videos and pictures with different ratios. Does Imovie give you the option to play a title onto a background? Say a family photo that can play as the border to keep the ratio the same? Does it allow for an auto-fit where it will scale the video to keep the same ratio like watching a 4:3 HD show on your widescreen TV?

The way I have done it in the past to preserve the ratio as original is to make several clips and just play them separately in succession. This works unless you want to mix the photos and the videos together and add a soundtrack. I wish I had my mac here. It hasn't arrived yet or I could probably figure it out for you fairly quickly. It is probably just one setting causing the cropping.

04-19-2011, 07:02 AM

This is a play once 11 minutes montage that will be played on a mac laptop.

In that case, Share it to Quicktime using the largest format that it offers.