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wallisgigichan

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Feb 23, 2010
5
0
Hi everyone,

I am a total amateur in digital video editing. my goal is simple - to capture some HD home video and do a little bit of editing, nothing too fancy.

I have a Canon LEGRIA HF M31 and imovie 09. the problem is, when i preview the different clips to import, they look great! i have make sure i chose "import HD video as - FULL original size". but as soon as those clips are imported in an event, there are a lot of "lines" across the image, and if i edit those clips in a project then export it, the quality drops even further. but with each steps i made sure i chose the highest quality possible.

My question is simple: is my camcorder not supported by iMovie? or i am missing a step?

i have search for answers online, and the term interlacing and progressive keep coming up. i have no idea what they mean either...

any help will be greatly appreciated!

Thanks

Wallis
 

KeithPratt

macrumors 6502a
Mar 6, 2007
804
3
The lines are interlacing and should be there. You can see them in iMovie because computers, unlike TVs, can't properly display interlaced video (though they can do some processing that mimics what you see on a TV — more of which below).

What you do about it is down to where you're going to view the end product. If it's destined for TV, just ignore it and all will look fine in the end. If it's destined for YouTube you want to de-interlace by discarding a field. If you just want to watch and store it on your computer you might be best leaving it as is and using VLC and its on-the-fly bob de-interlacing (which will look as it would on TV).
 
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