iMovie- Pictures become blurry after import

Wow, what an amazing thread. Karl, your knowledge on all this is incredible!

I've read through most of this thread, but my first question is how this issue is addressed in regards to iMovie HD 6. There is obviously still a problem because my playback from DVD shows "jaggies" -- but the options for sharing and exporting is different in 6.0. I need to figure out what I'm doing wrong and how to do it right in version 6.0.

Here's what I did:
1) Created 7 slideshows in iPhoto 6 with digital photos. Added custom KB effects to each photo in each slideshow.
2) Exported each slideshow. The only option was Movie Size, which I set to Large (640x480).
3) Imported each movie file into iMovie 6. Added theme elements and music. Playback in iMovie looked acceptable.
4) Selected iDVD from the Share menu. There are no options there so I simply let iMovie send the project to iDVD.
5) Customized the iDVD menu and burned the project. Playback from iDVD also looked acceptable.

I saw no evidence of "jaggies" or other major quality problems when previewing my project in iMovie and iDVD. However, the DVD playback on both my Mac and TV was not acceptable. I wouldn't consider the quality horrible, but it wasn't what I expected and the "jaggies" were definitely there.

I'm a little uncertain of my case in comparison to what I've read here since I didn't create the slideshow in iMovie itself. I can't seem to pinpoint where my error is, and I would GREATLY appreciate any suggestions to help me solve this issue!

Note that the jaggies bug ONLY affects iMovie's rendering of images that have NOT already been rendered by iMovie's Ken Burns Effect. (If the Ken Burns checkbox was ON when the image was imported, KB rendered the video of the image.)

The bug will NOT affect slideshow movies created in iPhoto and imported to iMovie. By definition that is a movie, not a still image. So the tests you ran will not encounter the bug.

Unfortunately, the bug has survived the transition to iMovie 6. It's actually worse in iMovie 6, for it occurs more places.

In iMovie 5, iMovie would ask permission to render unrendered images when you pressed the Create iDVD Project button. If you said Yes, it added jaggies.

In iMovie 6, it asks permission other places too, when you Share to iDVD, iPod, iWeb, GarageBand, and Bluetooth. If you grant permission at any of those times, it adds the jaggies. Some of those movies are quite small, so it's harder to see the jaggies. But the damage is done to the iMovie project clips, making high-quality exports of any kind impossible.

Karl

Thanks for the reply, Karl. You say the bug will not affect movies that are imported. This makes sense to me, which is why I thought my situation might be different.

I need to trace down the cause of the video degradation and I'm not sure where else to look. Quality is poor on DVD, as a Disk Image and as a full quality DV file from iMovie. It's got to be something iMovie is doing to the video files, because they look good before importing them.

I know I can skip iMovie and go straight to iDVD with the movie clips I create in iPhoto, but I want to add the theme elements and multiple audio clips that iDVD can't do.

Any suggestions?

PowerMac G5 1.8 GHz Mac OS X (10.4.6)

Have you burned a DVD and played it on a TV? A DVD never looks as good played on a computer monitor as it does on a TV. The DVD is made for TV resolutions.

And the playback settings of the Full Quality DV file must be configured with QuickTime Pro to see all the quality that's there.

That said, iPhoto 6 exports its slideshow as an MPEG-4 movie, which iMovie must convert to DV if yours is a DV-type project. Nonetheless, I've been surprised how well the iPhoto slideshow survives the transition.

Karl

This thread is about blurry images in iMovie 5, so it isn't a good place to discuss iPhoto 6/iMovie 6 issues. If you can't resolve the issues I suggest starting a new topic in the iMovie 6 forum.

Yes, the DVD on a TV still looks unacceptable.

Thanks for your replies. I'll take a look around the iMovie 6 forum.

PowerMac G5 1.8 GHz Mac OS X (10.4.6)