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Level 1

5 points

iMovie project quality poor in iDVD export

I'm having problems with the quality of iMovie projects exported to iDVD. The final dvd looks very pixelated, however, when I export the same project to iTunes and view the video on same TV, the video looks perfect...clear as a bell, when great definition.

Here's what I'm doing...

Video imported from my HD camera at Large 960x540,Optimize setting.
Clips moved from Events to Projects.
No major edits made in Projects outside of a trim or two.
Project 'Finalized.'
Project sent to iDVD via Share > iDVD.

Am I missing something? I've even tried omitting step 4 above...not finalizing. Same DVD result. The video looks perfect on my screen in both iMovie and iDVD as I work on it. Only experiencing problem with final DVD output.

I'm using iMovie 11 (v9.0.4), iDVD (v7.1.2).

This is the first time that I've used iMovie 11 to create my video before sending to iDVD. In the past, I've used iMovie HD and never had a problem with iDVD output.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.4)

Posted on Sep 24, 2012 8:18 AM

Best reply

Bengt Wärleby

Level 6

19,458 points

Posted on Sep 24, 2012 11:04 PM

There are lot's of thought's about this - read as much as You want of my notes.

DVD quality

1. iDVD 08, 09 & 11 has three levels of qualities. (version 7.0.1, 7,0.4 & 7.1.1) and iDVD 6 has the two last ones

• Professional Quality

(movies + menus up to 120 min.) - BEST (but not always for short movies e.g. up to 45 minutes in total)

• Best Performances

(movies + menus less than 60 min.) - High quality on final DVD (Can be best for short movies)

• High Quality (in iDVD08 or 09) / Best Quality (in iDVD6)

(movies + menus up to 120 min.) - slightly lower quality than above

Menu can take 15 minutes or even more - I use a very simple one with no audio or animation like ”Brushed Metal” in old Themes.

About double on DL DVDs.

2. Video from

• FCE/P - Export out as full quality QuickTime.mov (not self-containing, no conversion)

• iMovie x-6 - Don't use ”Share/Export to iDVD” = destructive even to movie project and especially so

when the movie includes photos and the Ken Burns effect NOT is used. Instead just drop or import the iMovie movie project icon (with a Star on it) into iDVD theme window.

• iMovie’08 or 09 or 11 are not meant to go to iDVD. Go via Media Browser or rather use iMovie HD 6 from start.

DO not use - "Share to iDVD" in any iMovie version !

iMä'08 to 11 - "Share to Media Browser" and as LARGE or Medium - NOT HD or other resolutions as this too degrades the final DVD.

3. I use Apple Disk Util tool (or Roxio Toast™) to make an as slow burn as possibly e.g. x4 or x1 (in iDVD’08 or 09 this can also be set)

This can also be done with Apple’s Disk Utilities application when burning from a DiskImage.

4. There has to be about or more than 25Gb free space on internal (start-up) hard disk. iDVD can't

use an external one as scratch disk (if it is not start-up disc). For SD-Video - if HD-material is used I guess that 4 to 5 times more would do.

5. I use Verbatim ( also recommended by many - Taiyo Yuden DVDs - I can’t get hold of it to test )

6. I use DVD-R (no +R or +/-RW) - DVD-R play’s on more and older DVD-Players

7. Keep NTSC to NTSC - or - PAL to PAL when going from iMovie to iDVD

(I use JES_Deinterlacer to keep frame per sec. same from editing to the Video-DVD result.)

8. Don’t burn more than three DVDs at a time - but let the laser cool off for a while before next batch.

iDVD quality also depends on.

• DVD is a standard in it self. It is Standard Definition Quality = Same as on old CRT-TV sets and can not

deliver anything better that this.

HD-DVD was a short-lived standard and it was only a few Toshiba DVD-players that could playback.

These DVDs could be made in DVD-Studio Pro. But they don’t playback on any other standard DVD-Player.

Blu-Ray / BD can be coded onto DVDs but limited in time to - about 20-30 minutes and then need

_ Roxio Toast™ 10 Pro incl. BD-component

_ BD disks and burner if full length movies are to be stored

_ BD-Player or PlayStation3 - to be able to playback

The BD-encoded DVDs can be play-backed IF Mac also have Roxio DVD-player tool. Not on any standard Mac or DVD-player

Full BD-disks needs a BD-player (in Mac) as they need blue-laser to be read. No red-laser can do this.

• HOW much free space is there on Your internal (start-up) hard disk. Go for approx. 25Gb.

less than 5Gb and Your result will most probably not play.

• How it was recorded - Tripod vs Handheld Camera. A stable picture will give a much higher quality

• Audio is most often more critical than picture. Bad audio and with dropouts usually results in a non-viewed movie.

• Use of Video-editor. iMovie’08 or 09 or 11 are not the tools for DVD-production. They discard every second line resulting in a close to VHS-tape quality.

iMovie 1 to HD6 and FinalCut any version delivers same quality as Camera record in = 100% to iDVD

• What kind of movie project You drop into it. MPEG4 seems to be a bad choice.

other strange formats are .avi, .wmv, .flash etc. Convert to streamingDV first

Also audio formats matters. I use only .aiff or from miniDV tape Camera 16-bit

strange formats often problematic are .avi, .wmv, audio from iTunes, .mp3 etc

Convert to .aiff first and use this in movie project

• What kind of standard - NTSC movie and NTSC DVD or PAL to PAL - no mix.

(If You need to change to do a NTSC DVD from PAL material let JES_Deinterlacer_3.2.2 do the conversion)

(Dropping a PAL movie into a NTSC iDVD project

(US) NTSC DVDs most often are playable in EU

(EU) PAL DVDs most often needs to be converted to play in US

UNLESS. They are play-backed by a Mac - then You need not to care

• What kind of DVDs You are using. I use Verbatim DVD-R (this brand AND no +R or +/-RW)

• How You encode and burn it. Two settings prior iDVD’08 or 09

Pro Quality (only in iDVD 08 & 09)

Best / High Quality (not always - most often not)

Best / High Performances (most often my choice before Pro Quality)

1. go to iDVD pref. menu and select tab far right and set burn speed to x1 (less errors = plays better) - only in iDVD 08 & 09

(x4 by some and may be even better)

2. Project info. Select Professional Encoding - only in iDVD 08 & 09.

Region codes.

iDVD - only burn Region = 0 - meaning - DVDs are playable everywhere

DVD Studio pro can set Region codes.

1 = US

2 = EU

unclemano wrote

What it turned out to be was the "quality" settings in iDVD. The total clip time was NOT over 2 hours or 4.7GB, yet iDVD created massive visual artifacts on the "professional quality" setting.

I switched the settings to "high quality" which solved the problem. According iDVD help, "high quality" determines the best bit rate for the clips you have.

I have NEVER seen iDVD do this before, especially when I was under the 2 hour and 4.7GB limits.

For anyone else, there seem to be 2 places in iDVD to set quality settings, the first is under "preferences" and the second under "project info." They do NOT seem to be linked (i.e. if you change one, the other is NOT changed). take care, Mario

to get this to work I

• Secure a minimum of 25Gb free space on Start-Up (Mac OS) hard disk

• Use Verbatim DVD-R (absolutely no +/-RW)

• Set down burn speed to x4 - less burn errors = plays on more devices

• No other process running in background as - ScreenSaver, EnergySaver OR TIMEMACHINE etc

• and I'm very careful on what kind of video-codecs, audio file format and photo file formats I use

• and I consider the iDVD Bug - never go back to video-editor to change/up-date - if so Start a brand new iDVD project

• Chapters set as they should - NO one at very beginning and no one in any transition or within 2 sec from it

• Lay-out - Turn on TV-Safe area and keep everything buttons, titles etc WELL INSIDE not even touching it !

Try to break the process up into two stages

• Save as a DiskImage (calculating part)

• Burn from this .img file (burning stage)

To isolate where the problem starts.

Another thing is - Playing it onto a Blu-Ray Player. My PlayStation3 can play BD-disks but not all of my home made DVDs so to get this to work I

• Secure a minimum of 25Gb free space on Start-Up (Mac OS) hard disk

• Use Verbatim DVD-R (absolutely no +/-RW)

• Set down burn speed to x4 - less burn errors = plays on more devices

• No other process running in background as - ScreenSaver, EnergySaver OR TIMEMACHINE etc

• and I'm very careful on what kind of video-codecs, audio file format and photo file formats I use

• and I consider the iDVD Bug - never go back to video-editor to change/up-date - if so Start a brand new iDVD project

• Chapters set as they should - NO one at very beginning and no one in any transition or within 2 sec from it

• Lay-out - Turn on TV-Safe area and keep everything buttons, titles etc WELL INSIDE not even touching it !

TO GET IT TO WORK SLIGHTLY FASTER

• Minimum of 25Gb free space on Start-Up hard disk

• No other programs running in BackGround e.g. Energy-Saver

• Don’t let HD spin down or be turned off (in Energy-Save)

• Move hard disks that are not to be used to Trash - To be disconnected/turned off

• Goto Spotlight and set the rest of them under Integrity (not to be scanned)

• Set screen-saver to a folder without any photo - then make an active corner (up right for me) and set

pointer to this - turns on screen saver - to show that it has nothing to show

• No File Vault on - Important

• NO - TimeMachine - during iMovie/iDVD work either ! IMPORTANT

• Lot's of icons on DeaskTop/Finder also slows down the Mac noticeably

• Start a new User-Account and log into this and iMovie get's faster too - if a project is in a hurry

• And let Mac run on Mains - not just on battery

Yours Bengt W

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19 replies

Oct 17, 2013 2:04 PM in response to Bengt Wärleby

This worked great for me....thank you very much!

coachgrd

Level 1

4 points

Nov 3, 2014 5:50 AM in response to Name

Just curious if anyone has been able to find a way (in the past year, since this thread was created) to better the final DVD quality? Frustrating to see the vibrant HD footage/project on the computer, burn it to DVD, then have it look not much better than VHS tape. I'm following the suggestions Bengt's listed earlier in the thread, almost to the letter. Anyone find the magic step since this thread was created in 2013 to get DVD to look as good as whats in iMovie?

Nov 3, 2014 6:18 AM in response to coachgrd

Only way is to either

- Store AVCHD onto a standard DVD (limit is about 20-30 minutes Max)

- or use another way as

Store HD material onto an USB-memory (as H-264)

Burn onto BluRay Disks (need of BD-Authoring program to encode this)

Cloud Storage - out of my liege - Have not a clue.

Yours Bengt W

Feb 20, 2015 5:07 PM in response to Name

If your movie is less than about 13 minutes, and you want super quality, forget iDVD. I found a way to create a super high-quality .mov file that fits on a DVD and you can burn it yourself, and anyone can play it. If you're willing to live with a slightly degraded version, you can put a 106-minute video on a DVD, and it'll look just fine to a group sitting in a room.

Having slogged my way through iMovie’s “Help,” online Apple Help and numerous blogs like this one with solutions that were frustratingly varied, hard to follow and even outright contradictory, I gave up and did my own methodical tests to see which combination of options and settings yielded the best result for creating a file on my desktop that can be shared.

Here’s what I worked with: I have a four-minute movie created in iMovie ’11, with nice titles and credits that fade in and out, and one-second cross dissolves in the film. The movie is 3x4 aspect ratio, not letterbox. Looks smooth and clean as can be in iMovie, full screen. (If it matters, I am working on a Mac OS 10.6.8; Processor 2 x 2.66 Ghz 6-core Intel Xeon; Memory 8 GB 1333 Mhz DDR3. I don’t see any “RAM” numbers for my computer.)

Tried exporting through Quicktime and not exporting through Quicktime. Most settings resulted in titles that were either fuzzy or were not clean and smooth during the fades, and often videos that were choppy and would freeze every second or so. Some had clean imagery and would play fine but got very pixilated during transitions (dissolves). Some that were much larger (higher megabyte numbers) and took longer to generate the file were actually of lower quality. Go figure.

Of all the tests I did, the best results came from doing the following. Here are two options:

For a small, convenient file that came to only 176 MB for my 4-minute movie, if you’re willing to live with some very slight image degradation and titles that show some slight compression during fades -- but looks perfect from across a room:

1) Share > Export using Quicktime > “Export: Movie to Quicktime” / “Use: Most Recent Settings”

2) Click “Options”

3) Click “Settings”

4) Compression: MPEG-4 Video

5) Frame Rate: Current

6) Key Frames: Every 24 frames

7) Frame Reordering -- unchecked

8) Compressor Quality: Best

9) Data Rate: “Restrict to 6400 kbits/sec”

10) Click “OK” and return to “Movie Settings”

11) Ignore “Filter” unless you want to alter the look of your video.

12) Adjust “Size” accordingly to your wishes. I clicked it, then selected “1920 x 1080 HD” and checked “Preserve aspect ratio using: Fit within dimensions.” This results in an image 1440 x 1080 (to fit within 1920 x 1080). Remember that if you don’t preserve your original aspect ratio you’ll get a larger/wider movie, but the top and bottom of your image will be cut off.

13) If your video is silent, make sure “Sound” is unchecked. I read somewhere that this speeds up the file-creating process.

14) Hit “OK”

15) Be sure to check where you want your file to appear. I chose “Desktop.”

16) Hit “Save”

That’s it! In my case, after about six minutes, I had a “.mov” file on my desktop that anyone can easily play (people may have to have Quicktime, though, as I understand it, but I believe that’s a free download; you do NOT need Quicktime Pro which costs $). I uploaded the file to a file-sharing site (Hightail) for others to download, and, testing it, it took me only a few moments to download (I have a FiOS fiber-optic connection, so if you don’t, it will likely take a little longer). The downloaded file played perfectly and suffered no degradation whatever from the one I generated to my desktop from iMovie.

----------------------

For a super high-res version, if you’re willing to live with the size, the ONLY difference is No. 9: Change your Data Rate to “Automatic.” But as mentioned in the beginning, a standard DVD-R will only hold about 13 minutes of footage at this quality.

Oddly, this super-quality version took about the same six minutes to generate the desktop .mov file, but the resulting 1.44 GB file is far, far superior. You’ll be thrilled with the result!

The only downside –– to all of the file tests I did –– is that there is a slight loss of color saturation and contrast from the original iMovie imagery I worked with, particularly with the reds and oranges which become a bit muted. The blacks/darks came up a bit, yielding slightly less contrast. But these drawbacks are minor, to me.

If someone knows of a way to preserve the exact original color saturation and contrast, I’m all ears.

Ken M.

iMovie project quality poor in iDVD export