Well the original quality wasn't "perfect" because it was a film I recorded in a Comedy Club; however, with Imovie set to 16:9 or 4:3 it has more grainyness (is that a word?) than if I show it from the camera onto the TV.
Ok - don't gauge the quality of the video by what you see on the tv to compare it to the computer screen - the video will rarely look identical and many times a poor quality video will look better on TV then it will captured into a computer. Grain can sometimes be made worse by digitization depending on the codec/bitrate used when storing the video (iMovie '08 though I believe imports and edits native DV so that is somewhat irrelevant - someone who might know more about iMovie '08 can step in and correct me if I'm wrong tho - I really primarily use FCP and FCE)
Even before I export the file to anything. When I exported, I tried to "export movie - large" and also using "Export using Quicktime" movie to Quicktime, and movie to MPEG-4, as high of resolution as I could each time.
Using all the export methods, the only one that actually played, without crashing a Windows computer, was the "Export Movie - large".
If you're exporting movie using Quicktime conversion, and you selected MP4 - did you customize it at all, or just do the default export? If you just did the default export, it's going to suck no ifs, ands or buts about it.
for MP4 make sure:
When you press Options, on that screen:
File format is MP4 (not MP4 ISMA)
you can try MP4 basic or improved - personally I prefer H.264
Data Rate w/ SD footage try numbers between 500 and 1200 kbps (higher end will be better picture, you can go lower, but image quality at 500 will already probably be pretty blocky)
Image Size : Set to the size of the master footage - if it's from a DV camera recording in SD, select 768x576. Smaller might make the picture look better due to the smaller image, but if there is a lot of nasty grain in the footage to start with it may just accentuate it - you can experiment. DO NOT UPSCALE. Upscaling poor video will result in crappy large video
Frame Rate : This will default to 30. You can usually just select Current from the dropdown and be safe (there are a few times this may not work, checking the output will confirm if it worked correctly (ie: speed toward the end and make sure the audio is in sync with the picture)
Key Frames : I tend to set at 1/2 the frame rate. I had read somewhere once that had recommended it, I can't remember why it suggested it, but that's what I've used. So for SD video, set the frame rate to 15 (~1/2 of 29.97 which is the standard frame rate of NTSC video, if you're in PAL country, do 1/2 of the pal rate which is what? 25fps? so you'd select 12 or 13)
In the Video Options, default is single pass - if you just want to check your settings, do single pass for a quick output. If you want a higher quality file, do Multipass.
In the Audio tab, you can set your audio bit rate between 160 and 256kbps and set for best quality (lower bit rate = smaller file, lower audio quality) Test different bit rates to find a good compromise for you with regard to quality loss vs file size. I don't like loosing quality, so I tend to have higher bitrates.
In terms of playback on a pc:
The only ways to play back on a pc are:
1) Save the file as an AVI so media player will play it
2) Make sure the end user has KLite or CCC codec packs installed to properly play other codecs.
3) Make sure they have Quicktime installed that is 7.1 or higher to be able to play the files correctly.
So, all that said; it seems like my problem originates before exporting because it doesn't look so good when just playing the project full screen in Imovie. Is there a better way to import the video than FireWire? Could that be part of the issue?
No, there is no better way to capture footage from a miniDV camera. By capturing via firewire, you are transferring the raw digital data from what is on the cassette to the computer. Any other way would require a digital->analog->digital conversion which will make poor quality video look even worse as it's being decompressed and then re-compressed.
Remember - any time you take video and convert it to another format, there will be re-compression, which means a potential loss of quality. The poorer the source footage is, the worse it can look. To compensate all you can do is try to increase the bitrate on the output file to reduce artifacts from re-compression, but it will never look as good as the original (although sometimes it may be hard to tell by the naked eye).
It honestly sounds like you've got some rough video that due to the resolution of your screen, the grain is very obvious. But I'd try outputting to mp4 with appropriate settings (not ISMA, proper resolution and decent bit rate) and see what happens if you haven't already tried it. You should be able to get close to what the playback window looks like on iMovie - if the source video looks like crap tho, it'll look like crap on the output.
Let us know how it goes.
