iMovie- Pictures become blurry after import

Here's another version of that chart, hopefully easier to read. These dimensions are intended to eliminate pillarboxing by iMovie HD when importing the photo.

NTSC PROJECTS - MOVIE SIZE (pixels)
Standard DV 720 x 528
DV Widescreen 869 x 480
HDV 720p 1280 x 720
HDV 1081 1440 x 1080

NTSC PROJECTS - MINIMUM IMAGE SIZE (pixels)
Standard DV 720 x 528
DV Widescreen 874 x 480
HDV 720p 1280 x 720
HDV 1081 1440 x 1080

NTSC PROJECTS - CROPPING ASPECT RATIO
Standard DV 1.364:1
DV Widescreen 1.818:1
HDV 720p 16:9
HDV 1081 Photoshop 16:9, iPhoto 16:9.02

PAL PROJECTS - MOVIE SIZE (pixels)
Standard DV 784 x 576
DV Widescreen 1040 x 576
HDV 720p 1280 x 720
HDV 1081 1440 x 1080

PAL PROJECTS - MINIMUM IMAGE SIZE (pixels)
Standard DV 788 x 576
DV Widescreen Photoshop 1050 x 576, iPhoto 1048 x 576
HDV 720p 1280 x 720
HDV 1081 1440 x 1080

PAL PROJECTS - CROPPING ASPECT RATIO
Standard DV 1.364:1
DV Widescreen Photoshop 1.823:1, iPhoto 1.818:1
HDV 720p 16:9
HDV 1081 Photoshop 16:9, iPhoto 16:9.02

MMMM?
After a bit more playing around with imports I can only conclude this:
When a photo is dropped into the timeline without the Ken Burns turned on it does not render and the image is as it appears in iPhoto, however, it has no animation. When the KB effect is applied to the image regardless of the settings it renders the image and it becomes 'jaggy'.
The images themselves are large file types of nearly A4 original scannings and only slightly cropped in iPhoto. The images range from 2264x1699pix to 1244x932pix. The larger images are well within the range of exceptable image size. It doesn't seem to matter which size of image is effected. They all get the same amount of 'jaggy'.
This is becoming rather baffling. I understand it must be something to do with KB effect, but I'm blowed if I can figure out the correct combination of proceedures to eliminate the 'jaggies'.

but I'm blowed if I can figure out the correct combination of proceedures to eliminate the 'jaggies'.

We're talking now about the appearance in iMovie HD, right? (Not burned to a DVD). I wonder if your 400MHz G4 might be contributing to this. It may not have the built-in graphics hardware that iMovie HD uses for the best-quality playback preference. That might affect playback differently on still images vs video clips of those images.

First, check your preferences to be sure High Quality playback in iMovie HD is enabled.

You might try playing the TimeLine Movie.mov (in the Cache folder of the project package) in QuickTime Player. Turn on the movie's High Quality playback to see what it looks like in QuickTime Player. Press Command-J, choose Video Track from the left popUp menu and Quality from the right popUp menu, check the High Quality checkbox and uncheck the other two. (QuickTime Pro required.)

(When testing, be sure to close the Timeline Movie.mov in QT Player before saving the project in iMovie HD.)

They should look pretty much alike, with no jaggies.

Karl

I am also having a similar problem, but I find my pics jump, for example they look great for 1 second jump and lose contrast for 4 seconds and then look great for the last second just prior to transition!! I am using IMOVIE HD...

After burning to a DVD this problem is same, but magnified on a bigscreen!

Need help, presenting project on SAT!!!

THANKS 🙂

But, I'm using my 800Mhz G3 iBook while I'm supposed to be working.
I did some more detailed looks at image pixel sizes and played around with a few different size images. A standard uncropped camera image is around 2050x1530pix. After tweaking the KB zoom slider a tad for start and finish the jaggies seemed to get less noticable and after a few different experiments of combinations they were eliminated. I now know it is a case of tweaking the KB effect to suit the size of the image, which, unfortunately, will be a bit of trial and error in a case by case cenario. Most of the images in my original test were very large, around 2250+pix. I tried rerendering these while tweaking the KB and the jaggies did reappear, but to varying degrees depending on the amount of tweaking of the KB. I also imported a rather small image of 798x531pix. I was able to give this a large amount of tweaking, both in start and finish without getting any jaggies whatsoever.

New concusion: It is possible to make quality slideshows in iMovie, but it is a lot simpler in iPhoto especially if you intend to use irregular sized images.
Do you agree?

We're talking now about the appearance in iMovie HD, right?

I've noticed that at least with my setup, the imported images initially often are displayed very poorly in iMovie HD, but then actually playing the clip shows much better quality.

Thanks for all the testing you've done, Silly rabbit. Very interesting.

New concusion: It is possible to make quality slideshows in iMovie, but it is a lot simpler in iPhoto especially if you intend to use irregular sized images. Do you agree?

I'm glad you were finally able to get good results. I can't understand, however, why iMovie HD would be so affected by the zoom settings. I've never seen the image quality change -- except when zooming more than the source image allows -- but your images seem different in some way.

I'd love to examine one or two here to see what I can discover/uncover about what Ken Burns does. If you could post a couple of examples somewhere, or send them to me privately, I'd be very appreciative. (For my email address, click on my name at the left.)

Karl

Hello Karl,
After a bit more playing around I found the standard camera images are fine and the tweaking is standard, so it is possible to import a bundle of photos under the same KB settings once you have experimanted with one or two images. Unfortunately, I am using a lot of differently sourced images from magazines and old photo negatives to calendars and reworked Photoshop images. I have determined the different pixel sizes create different renderings of each individual image using the KB effect causing the dreaded 'jaggies'. Small pixel images scanned from 30 year old negatives can handle a large amount of KB zoom, both in start and finish, however, the images scanned from say, a calendar, that are nearly A4 size images and 2500+pix will only cope with a small amount of zooming both in start and finish due to the large amount of pixels. This is not such a bother if your images are from the same source and of similar pixel size, like from a digital still camera. You can apply the same amount of KB to the group of images. But, when I'm creating a slideshow of images from different sources this becomes a very time consuming process to tweak the KB for every image, where as, an iPhoto slideshow does not require any tweaking and the images are all appear the same regardless of the the amount of pixels. I also like the few extra transitions that are available in iPhoto, so in most cases I will still go with the the iPhoto slideshow, but now, when I want to put a few photos into a movie time line I know how to do it. I'm sure you can try a test of similar standard by scanning two very different sized images and importing them to iMovie. It is only the large pixel images that create problems, but as has been determined, it is rectafiable by a bit of tweaking of the KB effect.
Thanks for your input Karl. No doubt our paths will cross again.

I'm sure you can try a test of similar standard by scanning two very different sized images and importing them to iMovie. It is only the large pixel images that create problems

Thanks. I'll try that.

Karl

I'm having similar problems, even with fairly standard images. I'm trying to use still photos from the iPhoto Library, put into an iMovie. The images were taken with a 5 megapixel digital camera and are about 1.7 MB, 2592x1944 in size. They look crystal clear when viewed in iPhoto. However, when I try to use them in iMovie, with or without the Ken Burns effect, I get a big reduction in quality... very jagged. Once the photo is in the iMovie timeline, if I check "Get Info" it says the size is only 117 KB. Is this normal?

The movie is only slightly better looking when viewed in QuickTime. I haven't tried burning a CD or DVD yet. The playback quality in iMovie is set on high.

I've seen impressive examples of the Burns effect on still images, such as the Beach screensaver that comes with the system (I presume). I'm very eager to produce similar clear and smooth movies!

This is a brand new iMac running OS X 10.3.5. I'm an experienced Mac user, but new to OS X and all the goodies in iLife.

Sounds like there are others with similar problems. Can't tell from discussion if we're doing something wrong or if this is just a limitation.

Hi Elda,
Welcome to the 'jaggies' thread.
Your images are on the large scale of things, but because they are from the same source the pixels will be around the same per image which means you will only have to find the right setting for your images and stick to it. Make sure the KB effect is turned off when you import them and then do a few experimental tweaks with the KB both in start and finish. You will find the correct combination to suit your images and then just apply the settings to all of them. I know it seems like a lot of playing around, but once you find that sweet spot you will be able to produce the quality of the KB beach scene you mentioned in your post. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a set format per image pixel rating at this stage, but with the experimenting being done by fellow threaders I am sure it is only a matter of time before someone can come up with a set of guidelines for using KB to match the pixels of the image so as to eliminate the jaggies. Just have a bit of a play around with the settings and see what you come up. Maybe you can find the key and share it with us.
I hope this helps.

Elda, don't worry about image quality until you see how it looks on a TV. Most likely it be fine. You can't judge how it will look in iMovie HD, for it doesn't show you all the quality that's there. (It isn't that "lots of people are having problems", it's that many prejudge the quality by what they see in iMovie.)

Just make sure you don't permit iMovie HD to render the images into video after you click the Create iDVD Project button in the iDVD pane. That will render the images poorly, creating lots of jaggies. (If you have already done this, re-import those images.)

it says the size is only 117 KB. Is this normal?

That's normal. It's the size of one frame of your movie. Remember, iMovie HD converts your 2592 x 1944 image to digital video, which is about one-quarter the size.

You might want to try creating a project using the HDV 720p format. You can't burn it as HD on a DVD, but it's very nice for viewing on the Mac.

Karl

It is only the large pixel images that create problems, but as has been determined,

I was able to confirm that very-large pixel images can sometimes have problems when imported to iMovie HD. My rudimentary tests suggested the images were considerably larger than Silly rabbit saw.

At no time did the images I tested acquire jaggies. The defects were in the rendering of background walls, and in one case, some unexpected cropping of the image.

These are huge images, larger than anything I expect to shoot in a still camera soon. It should also be noted that in all cases, the problems could be easily avoided by resizing the image a fewer number of pixels.

To create images with a variety of sizes, I scanned a magazine image (high quality printing) using a range of dpi settings from 72 to 800 dpi, creating TIFF images from 812 x 583 (1.4MB) to 9024 x 6480 (167MB). Then I cropped the images in Photoshop to the proper aspect ratio for both a DV project and a 720p project.

For the DV project, I started having problems at 6760 x 3803. For that size and larger, the Ken Burns zoom at 1.0 might look okay, but an animated KB zoom might show some defects.

Problems started later for the 720p project, but they occurred there too.

It's not surprising, I suppose, that iMovie HD would have SOME upper limit of pixel dimension for importing images.

Karl

Nice work Karl, as usual. I am still experimenting and getting any varied results.

I'm sorry.
I'm not getting any of this at all.
I'm having the same problem as far as getting really jaggy pictures when i view my images in imovie but really sharp when originally viewed on iphoto.

Most of my images are large res photos from a nikon d70.

I am familiar with macs but am very new to all this ilife stuff.
Is there any way that you can explain this in a more lamens terms?
I'm sorry.