iMovie slide show photos shimmy (unstable)

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Level 4

1,395 points

iMovie slide show photos shimmy (unstable)

In doing some real estate presentations of properties, I am having a consistent problem with photos from iPhoto lately.

My usual sequence is to load digital photos into iPhoto.
Then once I create my iMovie project I select the shots from iPhoto and insert into the timeline.
In every case so far these have been forest or landscape photos, mostly green trees and also some lake or slough photos,

Some of the photos shimmy or seem unstable. I only expose them for about 3 seconds, but I believe they start to stabilize before going to the next.

I have been doing these kind of slide shows for about three years, but have only had this problem for about the last six months.

I check for software updates at the end of each day.

Some photos do this and others that are similar don’t.
The photos JPEG’s and all average from 1.1 to 1.4 mb.
I believe they have been from different cameras as well.

I have re-done many projects many times.
This happens before I add the music or titles.
At first I thought that may have been the problem, but not so.

After completing the project I then burn a disk image with iDVD.
When I play either through DVD player or burn a disk and play on a DV player it has the same problem.

Harold

17" Powerbk 1GB - 2 monitors Mac OS X (10.4.9) 3 external 500GB Lacie HD's / Lacie dual layer burner / iLife6

Posted on Mar 27, 2007 3:21 PM

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Answer 1

Mar 27, 2007 10:15 PM in response to Harold Coates

iMovie does not properly blur high contrast images so they tend to flicker.

The workarounds:

Bicubically downsample (iPhoto can do this) the images to 640x480 before importing them to iMovie. Or apply a small gaussian blur to the images and keep their original resolution.

Or for the best quality:

Prepare the stills into video with 3rd party app Photo To Movie.

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Answer 2

Harold Coates Author

Level 4

1,395 points

Mar 29, 2007 10:39 AM in response to Matti Haveri

Thanks for responding Matti,

I have tried just about everything, but still have the problem.
At least 25 attempts to burn and many hours of what should be a 35 minutes project.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ THE LATEST ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The problem can best be described as ‘crawling pixels’.

I have finally found that when I place the 17 photos into iMovie at 4 seconds and then burn image thru iDVD it works well,
but when I add either an ‘Overlap’ or ‘Cross Dissolve’ transition I get into trouble on some but not all slides.
I have used :27 down to :09 and it makes no difference.

I have used iMovie for four years and have never had this problem until about 8 months ago. It seems to be getting worse.

The KB effect does no good and may even make things worse.

Harold:
I tried downsizing through iPhoto to 640x480 and then to 600 but no help.
I saw a suggestion by Karl Peterson which had a three step process, one being not to allow iMovie to render, but to let iDVD - no help.

THIS IS KARLS SUGGESTION:
There's a bug in iMovie HD that will turn your slideshow to mush, adding lots of "jaggies" to the image. These are stair-step lines along sharp edges like roof lines, power lines and fences. You MUST avoid that bug for you WILL be displeased.

If allowed to, the bug ravages images when you send the project to iDVD. When you choose the Share > iDVD command, iMovie will ask permission to render any UN-rendered images. If you grant permission, iMovie will add the jaggies while rendering the images. The image looks terrible on a TV.

Worse, the damage to the rendered clips is permanent. To fix the problem you must re-import those images.

The bug can be avoided by doing any ONE of the following:
1. As you import the image to iMovie, turn on the Ken Burns Effect in the Photo Effects palette. Then KB renders the image, which it does with great clarity. Once rendered, iMovie won't ask to render it again.

2. When iMovie asks to render, do NOT grant permission. Then iDVD will render the image.~~

3. Instead of using the Share command, drag the iMovie project into the iDVD window. Then iDVD renders the image.

This bug also affects Sharing to iPod, iWeb and GarageBand. Do NOT grant permission to render when iMovie asks. (The damage isn't as easy to spot on those videos for the frame size is smaller. But it damages your project.)
So avoid that bug and everything should be fine.

Karl Peterson's posting

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