iMovie 11 Projects Have to Be 30fps?

Tom: I thought maybe I read that on these forums, but maybe not. I'm still a bit confused and just trying to get my head around resolution and frame rates so that I at least have a few clues what I'm doing. I work in graphic design and in that realm I always want to start with the highest resolution/quality available and attempt to maintain it in the workflow as much as possible. Maybe I'm trying too hard to do that in my home video projects. I've been shooting in 1080i60 since I got the camcorder a few weeks ago, but keep wondering if I should be shooting in 1080p60. But then when it involves workarounds to even get the footage into iMovie one wonders if it's worth the trouble.

Guy: I just found a web site where the guy talks about editing the iMovie plist file to make it work with 1080p60, but he doesn't describe the process in any detail--just notes that it can be done. Find it about half way down this page:

http://ianperegian.com/MyFZ35_38_Webpage/SD700_CamcorderTesting.html

Here are the instructions I found on another web site for editing the plist to force iMovie to accept 60 fps project files (the guy is Australian so he's talking about 50/25 fps, but he says further on that it works for 60/30 as well):

It is very important to change the iMovie '09 internal preferences so as to preserve the 50fps progressive. If you don't do that, iMovie will convert your 50fps down to 25fps. To set the preferences within iMovie '09, as described on one of the Apple forums, you need to access the hidden plist files in iMovie.

4.First download and install PListEditPro from:
http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/development_tools/plisteditpro.html

Make sure that you have quit iMovie, then:
Look in the /Users/(your name)/Library/Preferences folder for the com.apple.imovie8.plist file (or simply search with Find for that file)
Copy the com.apple.imovie8.plist file and name it com.apple.imovie8.25fps.plist
Look at the "More info" for the com.apple.imovie8.plist file, and where it says "open with", check that is says "PlistEditPro (default)"
Double click on the com.apple.imovie8.plist file, and a new window with a list of files will come up.
Scroll down through that list of files to find "videoFrameRate" (near the bottom)
This will show "Number: 25" (assuming you have previously set up your iMovie for PAL and not NSTC; for NSTC it will show 30)
Change this value from 25 to 50 (for NSTC you would change from 30 to 60)
Do File > Save and close

You have now changed iMovie so that when it imports a video clip it will retain 50fps. (However, because you now have two different Plist files, you can simply change back to the original 25fps setting if you ever need to, by renaming the files, since iMovie will only use the file that is called "com.apple.imovie8.plist".)

There is for me. Also, it looks like iMovie 11's preference list is called something different:

com.apple.iMovieApp.plist

I found the videoframerate property in that file, and also in the com.apple.iMovie8.plist referenced above for iMovie 09.

Dan,

After more research it appears that *you don't actually need to change the plist setting to get 1080p at 60fps out of iMovie.* I took a 24 second clip from my Panasonic TM700 (shot at 1080p60), rewrapped the .mts as an .m4v file so it would import to iMovie and then imported it using File>Import>Movies. In the import window I checked "Optimize Video - Full - Original Size". I then placed this clip into a project and then did a Share>Export using QuickTime and chose 59.97 as the framerate and 1920 x 1080 as the size. It took 10 minutes or more to export, but the end result was a 1080p clip at 60 fps.

The framerate of the imported "converted" clip is 59.86 according to QuickTime's inspector.