imovie burn high quality??

Question

imovie burn high quality??

Hi,

I've exported an iDVD 720p movie to my hard drive. I found an old version of iDVD and have been able to get it on the comp and play around. The challenge is, any time I try to burn a higher quality version (the video file is 10GB) to a dual layer DVD to maintain as much quality as possible, iDVD gives me an encoding error. I've also tried Roxio Toast - I can get it to burn to dual layer DVD, but it's so grainy it's terrible - worse than pulling it up on Youtube. On the mac, the video is beautiful. Crisp, good colors.

I'm needing suggestions. What I'm needing to do is very basic and I'm very good with computers, but this is frustrating not only me, but my parents, who purchased the computer for their business to be able to archive high quality recordings of their shows. It's been a nightmare telling them that the $1,200 computer they bought can't seem to do this VERY BASIC task.

We have an Apple iMac purchased in May 2013 - so as new as can be basically. Standard iMac, no upgrades.

HELP?!?!

iMac, iOS 6.1.4

Posted on Sep 8, 2013 10:36 AM

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Answer 1

Sep 8, 2013 10:37 AM in response to broadwaygal24601

Sorry - I mean I've exported an iMovie project to a 720p .mov to my computer. I've also tried going directly from iMovie into iDVD, but that wouldn't let me do dual layer either. Exporting directly actually caused errors to happen earlier in the encoding process, just after menus were rendered.

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Answer 2

Klaus1

Level 9

52,749 points

Sep 8, 2013 2:50 PM in response to broadwaygal24601

What version of iDVD are you using?

What DVD burner are you using (as the latest imacs don't have one)?

What brand of media are you using?

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Answer 3

THX1136

Level 1

5 points

Sep 8, 2013 5:22 PM in response to broadwaygal24601

Did you place chapter markers in the video? You don't need one at the front nor the back. They also must be separated in time from transitions as I understand it - I think more than 2 seconds is sufficient. Klaus1 should be able to help with all the particulars.

Message was edited by: THX1136

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Answer 4

Sep 8, 2013 10:18 PM in response to broadwaygal24601

I'm running iDVD 7.1.2, using the Superdrive that's the USB accessory for the iMac and I've tried Verbatim and Memorex.

I don't think it even gets to the part where it goes to the media, so I'm not sure what the issue would be. The dual layer I'm trying to use is the Verbatim.

I don't know how to add chapters to iDVD, I just got it on here a few days ago, so I haven't had a ton of time to play around. But I just used the "magic dvd" function, then edited to add clips for the menu drop zone and the titles.

I've read that the 30fps might be an issue, but I couldn't find anywhere in iMovie where I can edit the output settings.

Thanks all!

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Answer 5

Sep 9, 2013 1:37 AM in response to broadwaygal24601

DVDs are by standards just 720x480 in resolution… about a quarter of your actual footage.

And playback a DVD 'full screen' on an iMac zooms-in again, blowing up the few pixels, about by factor 6x.

keep this in mind, when judging 'quality'.-

To get max possible quality, stay under 60min of content on SL dvd-r, 120min on DL dvd-r

Putting <60min on DL has no effect, just draining your wallet …

In iMovie, choose Export using Quicktime, in the many options, select AppleIntermediateCodec, which will export the internal timeline of your project without any un-neccessary transcoding. File is huge, don't worry, it's all about length. not size.

Drag resulting mov into iDVD. Works perfectly here…

Worked, to be precise. Haven't done a disk for years now 😁

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Answer 6

Sep 9, 2013 9:23 PM in response to broadwaygal24601

So I just tried some suggestions - and finally got it to burn, but it's got this gray "snow" all over it that it's basically unwatchable...any other ideas?

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Answer 7

Sep 9, 2013 10:53 PM in response to broadwaygal24601

broadwaygal24601 wrote:

… but it's got this gray "snow" all over it …

on TV?

Check your cable connections btw DVDplayer and TV.-

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