iMovie '08 and HD

cabbey · January 5, 2008

ok folks, pulling my hair out here... I've got a project in iMovie '08 that I edited together from some 1080i clips. All of the original clips in the iMovie imported events are showing as full 1920x1080 if I open them in finder directly, and if I play the edited movie from iMovie, it looks just as good as they do. But when I export it... I can't seem to get anywhere near the quality. Everything comes out looking like the colors have been compressed down to 6 bit per pixel or so, and the image has been shrunk down to a lower resolution then stretched back out. :puke

[Deleted User] · January 5, 2008

I have never used iMovie but I am guessing that when you play your project and it looks good is when your playing with the raw video data. You don't mention what you are exporting it to .mov I guess. As far as I am aware the quicktime movie format is a compressed format. Do you have a option to export to mpeg (.mpg)

Assuming my assumtion is correct, exporting to mpeg will produce a very large file compared to the compress .mov file

I f I have got the wrong end of the stick, sorry

Tim

cabbey · January 5, 2008

Both .mov and .mpg are containers, they can carry a variety of compression codecs. Typically speaking though, the compression usually found in .mov is less agressive than that found in .mpg. I've tried every export format available, they're all doing it. The one interesting thing I've found, is that if in the export options for any type of container, I tell it to use the "current" dimensions of the clip, it tells me they are 960x540!! Every clip that it imported however is 1440x1080 out in the filesystem (using "apple intermediary codec" as the compression inside the .mov). I've been trying to export them as exactly the same as they were imported... but I think somewhere in the middle it thinks the project is 960x540, so it down converts everything to that.

[Deleted User] · January 5, 2008

Check out this web site

http://video.about.com/desktopvideo/Apple-iMovie-4-web-export.htm

After a couple of seconds a video will start to run and goes through how to export your movie and mention various options for final resolution and size.

Not sure if it will help

Tim

cabbey · January 5, 2008

ooh, I'll take a look at that on the morrow. Thanks!

For now, I've managed to beat it into submission and gotten a test output in .mov format with the same resolution as the input. I'll poke at converting that to something smugmug groks outside of iMovie... for now, sleep while it exports my edited footage in .mov at full resolution. (which it's saying will take longer than it took to export it at the horribly mangled "full" resolution!)

cabbey · January 5, 2008

draggin wrote:

http://video.about.com/desktopvideo/Apple-iMovie-4-web-export.htm

Turns out that's the OLD iMovie, completely different than iMovie '08 (which was a ground up rebuild of the product from scratch). Many of the concepts remain the same though, and a lot of what he was suggesting is what I was trying to no avail. Thanks for the thoughts though!

DavidTO · January 5, 2008

Did you check the help file? When I searched for export, I found export with advanced options, and it told me this:

To export your movie with expert settings:
Choose File > Export.
Choose Expert Settings from the "Compress movie for" pop-up menu, and then click Share.
Choose the type of export format you want, and then click Options.
Set the compression format (known as a "codec").
Sorenson Video, DV-PAL, and Motion JPEG A are examples of codecs. Depending on the type of export you choose (such as "Sound to AIFF" or "MPEG-4"), you see different codecs and compression options.

Set the frame size.
This setting affects the overall file size of your movie. Better quality creates a larger file size.

Set the key frame number.
A low number (such as every ten frames) creates a better-quality movie with a larger file size.

Set the frame rate last.
You may get choppy-looking video playback if you set the frame rate to less than about 12 frames per second.

Are those the things that you've tried?

cabbey · January 6, 2008

DavidTO wrote:

Did you check the help file? When I searched for export, I found export with advanced options, and it told me this:

Are those the things that you've tried?

Yeah, I've been all through the help text. And done a number of those items. I still don't understand what is causing the problem, but I have a work around. the work around goes like this:

"export using quicktime"
export as "movie to QuickTime Movie"
set options as:
compression: Apple Intermediate Codec
frame rate: current
data rate automatic
optimized for download
compressor preset HDV 1080i (this is what my cam shoots)
size: "HD 1920 x 1080 16:9"
sound is aac, 48kHz, Stereo 128kbps

That file I then load into quicktime pro and export again as:
"Movie to MPEG-4"
options set as:
fille format: MP4
video format H.264
Optimized for cd/dvd-rom
image size 1280x720 HD
frame rate current, keys automatic
audio is set to passthrough.

THAT file, I then upload to smugmug.

with one of my test pieces of video, 1min 26sec long the first file was 897.3M, the second 200M... the video quality delta between the two is very very very small.

Now, I would have expected that exporting from iMovie '08, with the settings of the second export step, would have produced the same output. But they sure didn't seem to, not even close.

DavidTO · January 6, 2008

Wait. You just want to get it to mp4? You can export a good looking file that's large, but you want one that's nicely compressed? Is that it? Have you tried VisualHub?

cabbey · January 6, 2008

DavidTO wrote:

Wait. You just want to get it to mp4? You can export a good looking file that's large, but you want one that's nicely compressed? Is that it? Have you tried VisualHub?

Haha, I was surprised you didn't make that pitch the first time.

Yes I saw your previous high praise for it and was looking at it. At this point it would replace the second stage of that process done by QTPro. Ideally, I'd like to spit out that nicely compressed version directly from iMovie when I'm done editing... that's what hasn't been working that started this thread. At least as far as I've seen visual hub is only a converter, and not a full on editing solution like iMovie. I also have ffmpeg and ffmpegX here for that process, but so far I'm liking QTPro better than them.

Now if VisualHub has a profile to create files the PS3 will play out of the box, that would be one more point in it's favor. I was going to download the trial the other night, but it was painfully slow. I'll try it again.

DavidTO · January 6, 2008

cabbey wrote:

Haha, I was surprised you didn't make that pitch the first time. Yes I saw your previous high praise for it and was looking at it. At this point it would replace the second stage of that process done by QTPro. Ideally, I'd like to spit out that nicely compressed version directly from iMovie when I'm done editing... that's what hasn't been working that started this thread. At least as far as I've seen visual hub is only a converter, and not a full on editing solution like iMovie. I also have ffmpeg and ffmpegX here for that process, but so far I'm liking QTPro better than them.

Now if VisualHub has a profile to create files the PS3 will play out of the box, that would be one more point in it's favor. I was going to download the trial the other night, but it was painfully slow. I'll try it again.

Yes, it would only be for stage 2, but it's the fastest and bestest I've seen.

bwg · January 7, 2008

cabbey wrote:

Now, I would have expected that exporting from iMovie '08, with the settings of the second export step, would have produced the same output. But they sure didn't seem to, not even close.

I'm having the same problem...almost. The quality is fine exporting to .mp4/h.264 but the colors are HORRIBLE. I'll have to try your workaround.

what camera do you have?

cabbey · January 7, 2008

bigwebguy wrote:

I'm having the same problem...almost. The quality is fine exporting to .mp4/h.264 but the colors are HORRIBLE. I'll have to try your workaround.

Yeah, so you've got 1/2 of the problem I saw. Colors look like they're compressed down to like 4 bit per pixel... which was nice if you wanted to recreate the feeling of old SVGA video games. But that's not what I want my son's home movies to look like.

I'm still fighting with iMovie, 'cause I'd really like to do it in one export step.

what camera do you have?

Canon HV20 as of a couple days ago. (Hoorah for B&H's post Christmass sales... saved about $45, enough to snag a second (generic) battery... plus a $25 B&H gift card that I'll grab a wall/car charger with.) As I'm sure you'll recall, it came well recommended not that long ago. (I'd pretty much already made my mind up, that thread just set it in stone.)

cabbey · January 9, 2008

Sorry DavidTO, but it looks like I'm going to give VisualHub a thumbs down. It doesn't grok my cam's native format, so I can't use it to import (solving my most recent issue with iMovie '08.) It doesn't have an obvious HD output setup that the PS3 (note, not PSP) groks as a movie from my media server. And after a number of years of dealing with video in Linux, I'm quite well versed in ffmpeg's options... it largely seems to be a well polished wrapper around fmpeg and related tools. Admittedly, it's a better wrapper than others that have tried, like ffmpegX for example. It just doesn't seem to do much for me... certainly not enough to justify the $23.32.

DavidTO · January 9, 2008

Can't win 'em all!

mattslaughter · January 4, 2009

cabbey wrote:

Yeah, I've been all through the help text. And done a number of those items. I still don't understand what is causing the problem, but I have a work around. the work around goes like this:

"export using quicktime"
export as "movie to QuickTime Movie"
set options as:
compression: Apple Intermediate Codec
frame rate: current
data rate automatic
optimized for download
compressor preset HDV 1080i (this is what my cam shoots)
size: "HD 1920 x 1080 16:9"
sound is aac, 48kHz, Stereo 128kbps

That file I then load into quicktime pro and export again as:
"Movie to MPEG-4"
options set as:
fille format: MP4
video format H.264
Optimized for cd/dvd-rom
image size 1280x720 HD
frame rate current, keys automatic
audio is set to passthrough.

THAT file, I then upload to smugmug.

with one of my test pieces of video, 1min 26sec long the first file was 897.3M, the second 200M... the video quality delta between the two is very very very small.

Now, I would have expected that exporting from iMovie '08, with the settings of the second export step, would have produced the same output. But they sure didn't seem to, not even close.

cabbey - Have you gotten a resolution to your double formatting requirement for export from iMovie 08? Could you find Doc's user guide anywhere?? Thanks.

iMovie '08 and HD

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