Export to 4K 60 FPS HEVC

Hi, joey,

Until your post I was unaware that iMovie could share out at 4k 60p, since the literature says that it only supports 4k 30p. The 4k option would export it at 4k 30p. Other posters, including myself, have not been able to export 4k 60p. (I'm running iMovie 10.1.10 with Mojave on a 2013 MacBook Pro.) Possibly the newer 2017 Mac can do it, but I am not able to test. Assuming that your printouts are the specs of your shared out movie, they show 4k 60p (59.94fps), so I think that you can rely on that. To test, drag one of the shared videos as the first clip into a newly created iMovie project and then click on the settings button above the timeline to the right, and see if it is shown as a 60fps project. If you can't tell, expand out your time line, and put your cursor on the beginning of the clip and drag it to the right while holding down the "r" key on your keyboard. A frame counter will display. If it a 60 fps project the counter will click to 01:00 right after 00:59. If you have time, it would be helpful to us on this forum if you would try to share out the movie at 4k 60fps and see it successfully exports at 60fps, and then report back your findings.

At the moment there is no HEVC (H.265) share-out option with iMovie. You can share it out but it will get reduced to H.264 or pro res. You can then use Quicktime Player to export your shared movie out as HEVC.

The main advantage of HEVC is the smaller file size. The literature says that there is some increase in quality, but I doubt that anyone would notice unless they were a pixel counter.

-- Rich

Hi, joey,

Instead of placing the cursor at the very beginning, try placing your cursor further down the timeline and then dragging while holding down "r". You should be seeing a frame rate display like this:

The above example is a 30fps clip. The display reads 29 frames. If I drag one more tick to get to 30 frames, the display will cycle to 01:00, meaning one second and zero frames. That is because there are 30 frames per second in this particular clip, so every 30 frames it clicks to the next second. As I keep dragging it will progress 29 frames through 01:29 at which point it will cycle to 02:00 at the next tick, meaning two seconds and zero frames. With a 60fps frame rate like yours, it would register 01:00 seconds and zero frames at the next tick after 00:59 --- 60 frames per second. What we are interested in is the reading at which point the display cycles to the next minute. That will tell you the frame rate per second.

-- Rich

Yup. It worked. It shows at 60 fps.

Now test and see if it shares out at 60fps, and 4k.

-- Rich

You are welcome. Thanks for posting back with your results.

-- Rich