iMovie 09 export quality

Share to Media Browser in Large or Medium.

In iDVD, choose Professional Quality in Project Properties.

And what about this one: dont export the film, but drag the mov. project right in Toast or iDVD (of course with the highest quality settings). IMO in this way you skip one conversion. Am I right?

That may work in old versions of iMovie, from 2006 or before, but it does not work with the current versions of imovie.

Export from iMovie at the highest quality available and burn with VisualHub or Burn. VisualHub rocks.

I have tried all the iMovie 09 quality "work arounds" (Including the one above), but my DVDs never look as good as when I use iMovie 06 with iDVD 09.

iMovie 09 uses 'single field processing' meaning every other horizontal line of the video is thrown out, which reduces the sharpness of the footage. iMovie 06 uses ALL of the image to form the video.

iMovie 09 is a wonderful program assuming that you're using it for what it was designed to do, assemble videos to share on the Internet.

Does iMovie 6 has this good performance for DVD only on DV-films (I thought iMovie 6 was ment for only DV), or does this also apply on f.i. AVCHD-files (of course converted to AIC)?
I think there is a lot of confusion on this point. Who has got the answer? Thanks in advance.

I have used iMovie 06 for DV and AVCHD.

Voltaic can convert AVCHD for iMovie 06.

http://shedworx.com/voltaichd

Thanks Ziatron!
Still a few questions. Converting AVCHD in mov. or something else?
And what about the complaints I read concerning iMovie 6 would be much slower to work on than iMovie 9? Are you completely satisfied with this program or do you see also drawbacks?
I am interested in iMovie 6 because the DVD output is much better than on iMovie 6, so I read everywhere.
I suppose that Final Cut Express would perform also good concening DVD, I mean better than iMovie 9?
Thanks for the advice in advance!

Interesting...all...did I say ALL? of my iMovie projects that I have shared to the media browser in the 720p res. setting, then burned with iDVD, show no difference from a mass produced movie production DVD. Yes, I am viewing the resulting DVD on a high resolution monitor.

naperdan wrote:
Interesting...all...did I say ALL? of my iMovie projects that I have shared to the media browser in the 720p res. setting, then burned with iDVD, show no difference from a mass produced movie production DVD. Yes, I am viewing the resulting DVD on a high resolution monitor.

I am glad to hear that but I have the exact same problem and have searched forums and google high and low for solutions. It seems that this issue is not as prominent when dealing with HD footage as SD footage.

I am having a very similar problem. Using a Panasonic SDR-H40 that we bought just prior to my daughters birth, and now one year later I am just getting around to trying to compile everything into DVD's.

It seems that I get the decrease in quality when
1) I am viewing the movie in Imovie and
2) when I export a project from Imovie, it doesn't matter what type, codecs, compression I used at export, I tried a bunch of different ones and even reimported some original videos to try them out again.

What is weird is when I go to the Imovie events folder, and find the original .mov clip that I started with, and opened from the Finder, it is crystal clear. Compared side by side, the same footage is like night and day. One looks high quality, and the file i've exported as described above looks like something shot with a cell phone. Very pixelated, most pronounced in low light blacks.

It seems that Imovie imports the file and stores the original preserved file into the imovie events folder that you can open in finder. When you look at the same particular event in Imovie for editing or whatnot it looks degraded which I thought at first was a dumbed down "preview version" to make it easier to manipulate. Unfortunately, no matter what compression there is or file type, codec, or quality I choose, it seems to be actually exporting this "preview version" quality video because viewing in Imovie and whatever I export look identical.

So I am really not sure when the degradation. is actually occuring, at import, once I start manipulating, but it is definitely there at export.

What really ***** is I pulled out the ONLY DVD that I made with my PC before switching, and it is crystal clear, I think would look good on a HD television. And I thought everything would be easier with a mac.......

Any other thoughts anyone has would be much appreciated. I would really prefer not to have to switch programs, and I definitely don't want to have to go to something really expensive. It would be easier to buy a cheap PC to edit video. I just don't think I should have this much degradation to enjoy my home movies on DVD, I mean that is what you are supposed to do with these types of cameras.

Try exporting from iMovie 09 using Quicktime and select Uncompressed 10 bit. Drag the resulting file (which will be a big file) into your iDVD project. Burn DVD using Professional setting.

"Interesting...all...did I say ALL? of my iMovie projects that I have shared to the media browser in the 720p res. setting, then burned with iDVD, show no difference from a mass produced movie production DVD. Yes, I am viewing the resulting DVD on a high resolution monitor."

maybe you could post your procedure to help us out, like how you do this start to finish. i will be getting an hd camcorder and want to make some dvd's that look great on a hidef tv and hopefully only using my stock macbook pro.