Degraded image quality in iMovie

Apples and Oranges going on here.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pixel
Your camera takes "images" and iMovie is a "video"
editor. Specifically, iMovie is a DV Stream editor in
that any import that is not in a DV format will be
converted to one.
So. You've now shoved this huge dimension image into
the very tiny (720X480) size of DV. Your images are
probably 8 times larger in dimension and one would
think "more data into a tinier space would make a
more sharp image".
Nope. Only when printing.
Last is that your still image is converted to video
at a frame rate that matches your Project settings.
30 fps is standard.
Hmmm.
30 frames per second times 5 megapixel image (high
quality would be about a 25 MB file) equals about the
total data found on a CD playing in one second.
Somethings got to give.
Images added to iMovie Projects need only 640X480
dimensions because most TV's are also about that
display resolution.
Your computer monitor is probably set at 1024X768.
Nearly 3 times the resolution of a TV.
HD TV doesn't enter this equation yet.
Big isn't always better.
I have a bridge I'd like to sell you.
The check is in the mail.
Actually the "check" is done during playback on a
"standard" TV. iMovie is forced to lie a bit just to
get its job done.

...it took me an hour just to decide on which thread to post (you understand from here my competence-very low)! Wow! Here is the problem. I have to understand which way to go to import three 35mb presentations i made on keynote (with quite a lot of animations) to imovie to make transitions between them. I tryied with the first to import to imovie as a quicktime/best quality, but the movie lost far too much of his appeal. Now i'm at the point of thinking about importing the 2nd keynote presentation as a DV PAL, because i actually am importing these 3 presentations to burn a master and right after make a lot of copies to distribute to some clients of my job. As my main target would be to keep all the possible quality, am i doing right or a best quality/quicktime is my best way to go? Thanks for help Max

p.s. i also thought about skipping the imovie passage to see if the very beatifull keynote rendering remain untouched. What about this?
Quick TimeKirk, i have the monitor resolution at 1280x800 and the presentations are picture i took from my mac with Anteprima.app. Could this be the reason of the bad quicktime rendering?

I made several successful iPhoto/iMovie slideshows from my Nikon D50 images, in the 04 versions of that software. Now, attempting the same thing in the 06 software I get these wickedly degraded images when they're moved into iMovie. Any clues as to why this should be?

Karl says, "If you edited it in any way, select the photo in iPhoto and select Photo > Revert to Original to return the photo to its pristine condition, THEN export it."

In iPhoto I select Photo but "Revert to Original" is dimmed out. Why?

In iPhoto I select Photo but "Revert to Original" is dimmed out. Why?

The command is dimmed if you have NOT edited the selected image. (Edited in iPhoto.)

Nikon D50 images...

Make sure you export your photos from iPhoto to 640x480, as described earlier in this thread.

For what it's worth, my tests suggests no change in the quality of images from iMovie 4 to iMovie 6. But the tremendous explosion in the size of the images shot by today's cameras definitely DOES make a difference. Wonderful cameras like yours present a challenge that no version of iMovie is quite prepared to handle. Reducing the size of the image seems to help. For the time being at least, less is more.

Karl

Since my last post, and after three weeks of very frustrating trials -- and errors, -- I have succeeded in making a high quality iMovieHD slideshow, with music and titles. I was helped hugely by posts that appear above, particularly those by Karl. [iMovie6 is truly a vexing piece of software; I purchased Jeff Carlson’s and David Pogue’s books and, while finding them helpful, discovered they also did not cover a multitude of details.] For what it's worth, I want to pass on how I proceeded.

(1) I move photos from my Nikon D50 memory card to a newly-created/named folder on my hard drive.

(2) I open iPhoto6 and choose file>create new album. I give the album an appropriate name. [I always do after every step in this process.]

(3) Still in iPhoto6, I go to my main hard drive, select the new photo folder, and drag photos from there (originals, not Photoshop-enhanced) to the new iPhoto6 album.

(4) Again, still in iPhoto6, I select my new folder, and choose file>export>”scale photos to 640X424”>JPEG> (send to) “movies” (which is on my hard drive.)

(5) I open iMovie6 and select “new,” meaning I am creating a new project. The main iMovie6 screen comes on. I click on “media” and choose “photos.” From the menu I choose the iPhoto6 folder I just created. Its photos appear as clips on the screen. I click on one and do Control A (“select all”). I drag all photos to the line below that says “drag photos here to build your project.” The photos appear as clips along that line.

(6) I click on a photo, do “select all,” then click on “photo settings.” I de-select “Ken Burns effect” (because I don’t like it), I use a slider to determine how much “magnification” of the images I want (necessary in some cases to eliminate black borders around photos), and I use the other slider to choose how long each photo will appear in the slideshow.

(7) I add music and titles (in my case, no “transitions” or “chapters.”).

(8) I click on share menu >share> I select iDVD6 > share, and iDVD6 is launched.

(9) In iDVD6 I go to Project menu > project info> and check to see if any files under “media” are not checked. If that is the case I double click the name of the file and am taken to a “missing files” page. I click “find file” and when the troublesome file appears on the next screen I double click it and – fingers crossed – I go back to “project info” and see if the file is now checked. If so, I double click on the “burn” icon.

(10) In some trials at this point I was presented with a warning mini-screen that told me there were problems and I had to go to the “map” and do something, which confounded me. I went back to approximately step (8) above and proceeded until I was able to click on the “burn” icon without getting the "map" message and voila! The DVD disc tray whipped out, I placed a blank DVD on it, inserted the tray – and waited -- in my case, a couple hours. Then l a burned DVD popped out, and it was excellent.

I hope this is helpful.

Thanks for the description, Sprague. You pretty much nailed it.

One small time-saver: Step 6 can be eliminated by turning off the Ken Burns checkbox (and configuring your other settings in the Photo Settings window) BEFORE importing your photos. Then you only have to handle them once.

(The settings in the Photo Settings window "stick" until you change them. That means you usually want to configure the window settings before you import photos. Then future imports will arrive as intended.)

I don't quite follow the missing files problem in #9. It's unlikely the missing files have anything to do with iMovie. Perhaps there were items in the iDVD project that went missing. They might even have been added to the project long before the iMovie project was added to the iDVD project. I wouldn't worry about that. Probably a one-time thing. I wouldn't worry about that.

Karl

Karl:

KP: I don't quite follow the missing files problem in #9. It's unlikely the missing files have anything to do with iMovie. Perhaps there were items in the iDVD project that went missing. They might even have been added to the project long before the iMovie project was added to the iDVD project. I wouldn't worry about that. Probably a one-time thing. I wouldn't worry about that.
SPRAGUE: You're ahead of me as to the origin of the missing file, but In every case I ran into there was an audio file that did not have a check mark opposite it, but did have a slashed 0. I believe I discovered that if I tried to burn a DVD without "correcting" that situation, I was presented with a screen that told me i could not burn because of this missing/corrupted file. So I pretty much had to follow the steps outlined in #9, above.

Thanks very much for your comments, as always.


iMac G4 800 mhz 17" flat screen Mac OS X (10.4.8)

I exported iPhoto images as 640X480 as suggested in this forum, and all of them (usually aroyund 250 kb) are degraded further upon import into iMovie to 117 kb. Is there a fix. Is Final Cut Pro the answer to getting a quality movie? As it is a 117 kb photo is unusable

Yes, it's normal for iMovie to create a Still xx.dv clip that's about 117k when a photo is imported with the Ken Burns checkbox off. That's because iMovie converts all media to DV, and that's the size of a single frame of DV.

There's no need to worry about the file size; that's a fixed value for DV. Rather like a cup of water always weighs 8 ounces, a frame of DV is that size.

Judge the quality of photos by how they appear on the DVD. My experience is we get the best quality exporting from iPhoto as 640x480, then importing those images to iMovie.

And be sure to avoid the iMovie bug which adds jaggies to the image when rendering it. When sharing the project with iDVD, iMovie will ask permission to render the "still". Do NOT grant permission. Let iDVD render it.

Karl

Thanks for the info. So when I click for info on a clip I get the info for a single frame and not the 5 second default length?
Also wondering if Final Cut Express would be worth my while as an upgrade specifically to allow better quality photos. Any idea.
Thanx a million!--Jennifer

Thanks for the info. So when I click for info on a
clip I get the info for a single frame and not the 5
second default length?

You get a single frame that iMovie plays for 5 seconds. Quicktime lets a frame play for any duration the developer wants. Normally our NTSC movies play at 29.97 frames per second, but they can play one frame for 29.97 seconds just as easily.

Karl

Ah-that makes sense. Thanks a lot--Jennifer

Karl,
I hope you are still following this tread. I have been having the same trouble described here by many. I use a Canon Eos 12.7 MP camera and capture images raw. I am using Photoshop to batch them down to 640 max dimension now. The ultimate use of this slide show is for projection. I am unsure of the projector, epson perhaps, but it's in a roughly 900 seat auditorium. The projected image size is approx. 15 feet wide. Am I still trying for the 640 dimension in this case? As most everything I do is print oriented I still have a few "issues" with understanding. The dots per inch setting is irrelavant, only the pixel dimension matters, is that correct? Thanks for your help, I did this last year, it is for my wife's ballet classes and the images as projected, while enjoyed by many, were a real disappointment to me.

Powerbook 15 Mac OS X (10.3.9)

Sprague,

Ive been trying to follow your steps. When I get to the iMovie part and move all the photos into the clip area, I notice that when I hit the "Show Photo Settings" button, the preview pane image quality increases dramatically. But when I transfer the photos to iDVD the degraded resolution remains. So it looks like the high quality photo was imported to iMovie, but its just not showing that way. What am i doing wrong?