picture quality in imovie

behemoth_sd · Oct 2, 2011

so after endless searching and no luck i have finally decided to ask for myself. i am currently trying to make a video in imovie with only photos (slideshow) after getting all my music and pictures in and burning the dvd in idvd the quality if terrible. all my photos have very poor quality and everything with kenburns has this wave effect on it that makes the pictures look even worse. i have tried many different things to get it to work properly and nothing. the weird thing is that i have several videos before this project and all my pictures turned out great... no blurs or bad res and all pics with kenburns look great. so i know there has to be something wrong without having to download new software or transfer back and forth between programs because i have already made many videos in good quality. any suggestions on what it might be??

Mitcherooney · Oct 2, 2011

Greetings.

I thought that I'd read about this problem. And lo and behold. David Pogue comes to the rescue once again.

Now this fix applies to iMovie 6 and iDVD and at a guess, it should work with later versions....

When you share with iDVD, iMovie make a poor job of rendering the pics. If you turn your photos into digital video clips, iMovie doesn't get in the way when you share.

To do that, turn on the Ken Burns effect. You are left with a very high quality 'still' video clip that iMovie won't attempt to process when you share with iDVD. You will see your photos in all their pristine glory.

Let us know how you get on.

Cheers Mitcherooney

behemoth_sd · Oct 2, 2011

Hey,
Thanks for the try but the ken burn effect doesn't work. my photos no longer have the waving effect but they are still poor quality. I think i found the solution

Instead of clicking share idvd in your imovie tab i opened up idvd and clicked open project then found my imovie project and opened it that way. not only does the video come up instantly without having to wait for the transfer but it looks great. All thanks to my girlfriend who had the wonderful idea and to make sure it was correct i made a test burn saved to my desktop and just watched it. Perfection!

Mitcherooney · Oct 3, 2011

Greetings again....

Glad to hear that you found a solution. A technique to remember!

Cheers Mitcherooney

absame · Mar 13, 2012

so i tried to do what was suggested but not sure what file to open with iDVD. Went to iMovie project file and it was greyed out and couldn't be open. HELP

76papa · Mar 21, 2012

behemoth_sd said:
so after endless searching and no luck i have finally decided to ask for myself. i am currently trying to make a video in imovie with only photos (slideshow) after getting all my music and pictures in and burning the dvd in idvd the quality if terrible. all my photos have very poor quality and everything with kenburns has this wave effect on it that makes the pictures look even worse. i have tried many different things to get it to work properly and nothing. the weird thing is that i have several videos before this project and all my pictures turned out great... no blurs or bad res and all pics with kenburns look great. so i know there has to be something wrong without having to download new software or transfer back and forth between programs because i have already made many videos in good quality. any suggestions on what it might be??

Sounds like you burned the DVD in "Best" mode. Set the mode to "Professional"
in the info menu at top. Burn and it will be as good as the original in Imovie.

daytrade · Mar 23, 2012

Unfortunately iMovie will downgrade the quality of any HD home movie capture due to Apples codec, AIC.* I have spent a lot of time researching this and have come to the conclusion (like many others) that iMovie is rubbish.* The way I found to produce HD footage, either by saving to DVD or .mts files is to create a Windows 7 partition on your loveable Mac, using Boot Camp and a copy of Windows 7.* I then have just trialled Corel VideoStudio Pro X5 and I will say it is fantastic and does what you want iMovie to do....HD.
And this is a Mac forum?!

MightyGem · Mar 23, 2012

Not only that, but you are also limited by the resolution of standard dvds:

To record moving pictures, DVD-Video uses either MPEG-2 compression at up to 9.8 Mbit/s (9,800 kbit/s) or MPEG-1 compression at up to 1.856 Mbit/s (1,856 kbit/s).

The following formats are allowed for MPEG-2 video[7]:

At 25 frames per second, interlaced (commonly used in regions with 50 Hz image scanning frequency):

720 × 576 pixels (same resolution as D-1)
704 × 576 pixels
352 × 576 pixels (same as the China Video Disc standard)
352 x 288 pixels

At 29.97 frames per second, interlaced (commonly used in regions with 60 Hz image scanning frequency):

720 × 480 pixels (same resolution as D-1)
704 × 480 pixels
352 × 480 pixels (same as the China Video Disc standard)
352 x 240 pixels

DVD-Video - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia