IMovie 11 to IDVD settings

My issue with iMovie 11 is that, I am unable to capture DV footage off tape from my Firewire port in full resolution and fidelity. It's half the size, noisy and have combing artifacts. This should not happen. It's pretty obvious in the clip area. Power lines from hydro poles look extremely jagged, rather than smooth and texts are blocky etc..

Yes, iMovie 11 will do that.

Use iMovie 06 or Final Cut Express for full resolution.

I use iMovie 06 with iDVD 11 and my DVDs look like they came from Hollywood.

Well, I went ahead and finished my DVD. Here's what I ended up doing - I used the Share/Export to Quicktime, then selected Quicktime movie. I used the h264 codec, set at the Best quality. I set the size to Custom, at 960x540 because that matches exactly the size of the Large size as captured. The resulting file, when played in Quicktime, looked pretty good. Maybe a slight bit better than with 2 other codecs I tried (Apple Intermediate and MPEG4). One thing about using the Apple codec is there is a selection for 720p, 1080i or 1080p that is independent of the Size setting - no idea what it meant so I decided not to use the Apple codec for that reason!

Had trouble authoring the DVD in iDVD. Ended up having to burn to an image file, then burn the disk. The resulting DVD, played on a 50" plasma with low-end DVD player, is pretty good. Biggest problem is light of the original footage - dark colours show poorly through the rendering process. Might be some settings to help that. I guess. But overall, I'm happy with the result.

I'm not sure I handled the aspect ratio correct, though. Final product had black bars top and bottom. Need to set TV to stretch vertically to fill the 16:9 screen, whereas a commercial widescreen DVD plays correctly on the 16:9 setting of the TV. So, not sure what I id there - I set the size to 16:9 with letterbox if required. Maybe I shouldn't have? I'll have to play around with that some day.

Thanks for the help, guys!

My issue with iMovie 11 is that, I am unable to capture DV footage off tape from my Firewire port in full resolution and fidelity. It's half the size, noisy and have combing artifacts. This should not happen. It's pretty obvious in the clip area. Power lines from hydro poles look extremely jagged, rather than smooth and texts are blocky etc..

Yes, iMovie 11 will do that.

Use iMovie 06 or Final Cut Express for full resolution.

I use iMovie 06 with iDVD 11 and my DVDs look like they came from Hollywood.


Ziatron,

Are you sure? Cause after I installed Quicktime 7.6.3 and killed Quicktime X, my iMovie 11 is now capturing full resolution and fidelity like iMovie 6HD.

The reason why no one could capture iMovie 11 like iMovie 6HD lies in the use of the Quicktime codec!

You see, starting with OSX Snow Leopard, they install a new Quicktime called Quicktime X. Tom mentioned Quicktime 7, but OSX Snow Leopard did not install this as a default player. It's an optional install. Wonder why?
Anyhow, installed it and now getting results like Tom had said earlier. I was wondering why I am getting the opposite results of my DV and HDV captures. Key is, kill Quicktime X for good for sure or iMovie 11 will keep using it.

WIERD!

Happy camper now!

Message was edited by: Coolmax

Message was edited by: Coolmax

Mr. Tom Wolsky,

First, I would like to thank you so graciously for solving my problem!! In fact, I found it thanks to your hint!

It WAS, and yes it WAS Quicktime X that was causing this problem. Apple installed it by default.

For those who are having problems with your iMovie capture of DV and you have Quicktime 7 as your default player, than it is your video issues and nothing to do with iMovie 11 is worst than iMovie 6HD.
Now having Quicktime 7 as my default player after trashing Quicktime X, iMovie 11 works like iMovie 6HD capturing DV footage faithfully.

Thank you again Tom for the great hint! So there you have it. You have Quicktime 7 and I had Quicktime X all along.

Apple Apple Inc, shame on them!

Hi Coolmax,

I'm new to Apple and iMovie 11 and I've been reading many threads to solve the poor video quality I see, when I export the iMovie project directly to iDVD.
I understand that DVD quality is not great, but when starting with 720P media, it should be at least at par with regular commercial DVDs. I read the suggestion of exporting instead to Media Browser and then importing it in iDVD.

However after reading your Quicktime 7 vs 10 explanation on how to capture proper DV footage, I'm wondering if the same Quicktime issue is causing the poor quality seen in the direct iMovie to iDVD export.

1- Your opinion on this would be much appreciated.
2- Did you install the basic Quicktime 7 that came with the installation disks or did you upgrade to Pro?
3- You said you trashed Quicktime X - could you please elaborate on this? i.e. did you just associate .mov with Quicktime 7 or did you remove it completely? I read that Quicktime 10 is is an integral part of the OS and that it can be removed without consequence.

Further to what Chris has asked, I am curious if I install iLife '11, which I just purchased, if it will install Quicktime X and create a "capture problem" like Coolmax had? My current older version of iLife has QT7 and at least that wasn't one of my issues.

QuickTime X is installed by the OS, not by iLife.

Actually Tom, you need OSX 10.6 in order to install iLife 11. To install iLife 11, you are FORCED to upgrade to OSX 10.6 which debuts Quicktime X.

By the way, when you do a DV capture using Quicktime X itself, the resolution is also halved! Frustrating..

So you see the problem..

Message was edited by: Coolmax

Yes, you must have 10.6, which installs QuickTime X, but QT X is not installed by iLife.

My experience with capture in iMovie '11 is different from yours. DV media captured in the application appear to capture correctly.

Chris,

The recent discussions we had on importing only deal with interlaced video. With interlaced video, we are experiencing half of the resolution being imported even though the full resolution is actually being captured, with the exception of Tom W. I suspect it being Apple's implementation of a less effective de-interlacing algorithm, which I think is inline to what they are trying to market this software towards. They are not pretending this to be a Final Cut Lite version. There's Final Cut Express that can deal do this well at a price and you definitely need some computer hardware to go along with it too!

Having said that, we need to be clear that HD progressive video files imported into iMovie 11 is converted into AIC (Apple Intermediate Codec) for editing.
When you are exporting this to iDVD, it can go both ways. Do the quick and dirty re-encoding and recompression for iDVD with poor quality, or do share > media browser which will take longer, but not long enough to draw a huge roar from the mostly Mac consumer based crowd.
I think Apple understands that this software is given for free on every new Mac with Snow Leopard and that includes the lowly Macbook Air 11". You are not going to do productive HD production on a Macbook Air, but you see the consumer with a $1000 camcorder and a Macbook, Mac Mini and the Macbook Air does not know this. He or she expects the computer to be capable of handling HD content and then burn content vise a vis like it never left the camera. That's certainly possible, but with such lowly computational power, it may take a very long long long time to render an otherwise normal half hour footage. I think Apple realizes that iMovie 11 is going to be used for Youtube/Facebook production or mobile device distribution, but understandably consumers who see iMovie 11 as being a video editor sees that as being -- oh yeah I don't need to buy Final Cut Express and I can do this with my iMac.

Trashing Quicktime X was no use. Even Quicktime X captured DV footage from my camera in half the resolution too and so, it's an integral part of the OS! The only solution thus far is that Vidi captures DV in full resolution! But you need to de-interlaced captured video from Vidi before importing to iMovie 11, or iMovie will half Vidi's footage too!

Sadly, my solution involves using the PC. I use Windows Movie Maker to capture DV footage and save it in DVI-AVI file format. Then I use vReveal to deinterlace, denoise and stabilize the footage. I like this software because it utilizes my fast Nvidia GPU Cuda cores in parallel processing. When you have over a hundred cores working together, it will make even your fastest i7 look SLOW! The final processed footage is saved in H.264 encoded format. I know the encoding is clean and look almost like the original footage but in progressive format. Then import this into iMovie 11 and edit it through. I export the footage to a DV stream. If you were to save this file to H.264, then it will get compressed and quality of the footage reduced.
You can use the DV stream to burn a DVD using Magic iDVD or Toast. I use the PC with a commercial end software to burn it cause it seemed again to have a better MPEG-2 encoder, probably exploiting the power of parallel processing on my Quad Core PC -- means a lot faster burn but with really good quality.

If I want to watch my DV edit footage in HD, I just use vReveal and super size it to 720p using its super resolution algorithm. The result is simply amazing, which is why I'm still sticking with MiniDV SD!

The only way you can improve your final production quality is to step up to a commercial software like Final Cut, then expect to invest some serious dough on heavy duty processor hardware, RAID 0 drives if you don't want to wait awhile.

To give you an idea what's a high end card looks like..

http://www.nvidia.com/object/product-quadro-6000-us.html. I think it retails around $5000 each,

Otherwise, this is what you are going to expect with consumer level software and hardware.

Message was edited by: Coolmax

Message was edited by: Coolmax

Message was edited by: Coolmax

Message was edited by: Coolmax

we are experiencing half of the resolution being imported even though the full resolution is actually being captured,

Even Quicktime X captured DV footage from my camera in half the resolution too

Which if these statements is correct? They seem contradictory.

Tom,

Can you explain why when I import DV file captured by Vidi into iMovie 11, it is automatically halved..
When I import a progressive DV video file of the same (de-interlaced with a PC program), the resolution stayed the same. Why is that?

Personally, I don't really care if iMovie captured DV properly or not, but when iMovie 11 half any DV captured file during importation, this is a serious problem. Which means, I can not import DV interlaced files right from any source.

Because it's already deinterlaced.

Just to add, you have repeatedly said the cause off the problem is QuickTime X, and this simply does not seem to be the case.

Message was edited by: Tom Wolsky

Many thanks Coolmax for the very informative response!!!

Tom,

Perhaps a picture will explain my problem.

Here's the problem if you look at the image I took off the screen.

The test title DV footage was created originally in iMovie 11 and exported out using DV Stream with "PROGRESSIVE".
Then why is it when I re-import this test title footage back into iMovie 11, I get the result on the left? If it is de-interlaced then should it not look exactly like the original on the right? Yet, the text look so blocky, as though they had been down-rezed to half its size and then uprezed? This is what I meant by halving from the original footage. Look at the background as well; almost at the point of loosing detail. This is all supposed to be progressive (a computer image). Why is iMovie 11 treating this file like it is interlaced -- it doesn't make sense.

The only way I found that I can keep my DV footage import properly in iMovie 11 is to convert them either to H.264 or de-interlaced with vReveal, stabilized and then convert to Apple Intermediate Codec using mpegstreamclip. I recently found this AIC method works really really well, especially converting from uncompressed AVI file processed by vReveal and editing on my Macbook!

I like to mention to you that "ALL" other PC software including Vegas and Nero as well as vReveal import the same DV file correctly. iMovie 11, on the other hand, is doing this. This is not the correct way to treat a DV progressive file would you agree? You see, the captures look full size and they do, but not full rez. At first, I thought it was the Quicktime X codec because even in X itself, it is capturing the same way and the way you mentioned about Quicktime 7, I thought it must be the codec. But if Quicktime X is doing it other than iMovie 11, you can't really blame iMovie 11 alone. Only Vidi captures full rez.
No wonder iMovie 11 is no match against iMovie 6HD! Ziatron is also experiencing the same problem. From the look at the test footage, I understand why people still use iMovie 6HD!

I would be interested in your explanation of this problem.

Thank you again for your great expertise!



Message was edited by: Coolmax

Message was edited by: Coolmax

Message was edited by: Coolmax

Message was edited by: Coolmax