Why 1440x1080 rather than 1920x1080?

Question

Why 1440x1080 rather than 1920x1080?

I have a high-def Sony handycam. When I import into iMovie-6 (don't like the later versions) and inspect the Clips, they are 1920x1080. If I export from iMovie at "full quality," I get a movie that is 1440x1080. I can export to 1920x1080 by using "advanced settings" and selecting a Quicktime movie with that many pixels, but then I get a much larger file and the export is very slow. What is going on here? Is there an efficient way to export to the full 1920x1080 resolution? Why would iMovie have the misleading option of "full quality" and then reduce from 1920x1080 to 1440x1080?

Posted on Jun 9, 2014 2:58 AM

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Answer 1

Jun 9, 2014 11:22 AM in response to Karsten Schlüter

Thanks for the input. I think the mystery is now resolved. I do mostly outdoor video -- natural scenes and birds. Nothing even the slightest bit fancy or even remotely professional. On the other hand, I was concerned that I might be losing some resolution in going from 1920 to 1440, but I now realize that I was only getting 1440 in the first place. Oh well, 1440x1080 is a lot better than 640x480. So I'm not going to complain about it.

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Answer 2

Jun 9, 2014 3:13 AM in response to Michael Collins3

I may have answered part of my own question. I found a discussion on the web with a claim that Sony HDV cameras can only record up to 1440x1080. If that is true, it would partially explain things, but there would still be a mystery: why are there 1920x1080 pixels in the iMovie clips after importing directly from the camera? When I open iMovie clips using Quicktime 7 (once again, I don't like later versions), it says they are 1920x1080 pixels. I would really like to know what is going on and make sure that I am getting the best possible results when processing video from that camera. The only explanation I can think of is that the video is really 1440x1080 but Quicktime interprets it as 1920x1080 since it is 16:9 and the pixels are rectangular. If that is true, then it seems that it's a bad idea for Quicktime to tell the user that there are 1920x1080 pixels when there really are only 1440x1080 pixels.

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Answer 3

Jun 9, 2014 10:03 AM in response to Michael Collins3

1440 is an anamoprh format - it ALWAYS gets on playback 'transformed' to 1920..

historically, HDV wasn't able to encode fullHD within its own specs, limited by tape; so, Sony in its wisdom, decided to lower the horizontal resolution to 1440 BUT adding a 'flag' in the datas, that any player 'stretches' this to 1920.-

If every grain of quaity is your concern, iMHD6 wouldn't be my choice - due to AppleIntermediateCodec which is in use in IMHD6 to support this then 'new' HDef format. AIC was meant to handle this amount of data on now 10y old machines...

iMHD6 is unsurpassed a DV-editor, no doubt! It handled .dv natively. But not HDV. Nor can it handle AVCHD without manually transcoding ...

actual iMovie vers10.x or FCPX handle those modern codecs 'natively' - on fast machines....

.. but that discussion soon reaches an 'academic zone' - we speak of the last 3-5% of thi smagic thingi ecvalled 'quality'! You record with set lights? NDfilters? Within your cam's 'best' aperture-zone? Tripods? Respecting angle-speeds? 180° rule fo rshutter speed? ... etc etc etc.........

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Answer 4

Jun 9, 2014 9:20 PM in response to Michael Collins3

Michael Collins3 wrote:

I goofed up and clicked on the wrong place. ...

that's one of the many mysteries of Jive, the software this board's running on, why it allows an OP to mark his own post as 'solved' ... my assumption, evey 4-5th 'solved' goes this way, not your fault, just UI-madness 😁

Thanks for marking your thread as 'solved' anhow ... !

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Answer 5

Jun 9, 2014 6:33 PM in response to Michael Collins3

I goofed up and clicked on the wrong place. It was Karten's input that resolved the issue. Sorry about that, Karsten.

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