Some advice would be welcomed. I’ve been shooting holiday videos on my elderly Sony camcorder in 1080i at 60fps, editing them in iMovie on my 2020 iMac and then watching them through my Apple TV box on my 4k LG TV. All works very well. I recently bought a secondhand 4k Sony camcorder with the hope of getting even better quality videos shown on the TV. However, I now find that iMovie will only export 4k videos to Apple TV in a maximum of 30fps. So lots of questions. Is 4k 30fps going to be better quality than 1080 60fps? If I do export in 4K 30fps should I still shoot in 60fps and compress at the point of export, or is it better to shoot in 30fps at the outset? File sizes and processing time may also be a factor as well. My last video was 70 minutes long and resulted in a mp4 file size of 10.19GB. This was in 1080 and 60fps. If in 4k and 60 fps would that result in a file roughly 4 times larger? And if in 30fps only roughly 2 times larger? Finally, am I right in thinking that Final Cut Pro can export 4k 60fps videos to Apple TV? I don’t really need the extra features but it could be an option. I will be shooting some test videos myself with the 2 camcorders but any thoughts in advance would be much appreciated.
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4k iMovie home videos on Apple TV
- Thread starter andylan
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Yes, for whatever reason, iMovie is limited to 30 or rather 29,97 fps in 4K. So I you insist on exporting 4K/60 you'll have to go with Final Cut Pro.
Are 60fps worth it? In my opinion: no. Shooting 60fps really only makes sense if you intend on doing slomo after the fact. Other than that I see little to no point or advantage. Something I'm sure especially gamers will vehemently disagree with. But any and everything you watch on regular television (in the US) is 30fps, movies are even 24fps. And does that bother you in those cases?
And does your camera even shoot actual 60fps (i.e. 60p) or in fact 60i? Those are two very different things.
Are 60fps worth it? In my opinion: no. Shooting 60fps really only makes sense if you intend on doing slomo after the fact. Other than that I see little to no point or advantage. Something I'm sure especially gamers will vehemently disagree with. But any and everything you watch on regular television (in the US) is 30fps, movies are even 24fps. And does that bother you in those cases?
And does your camera even shoot actual 60fps (i.e. 60p) or in fact 60i? Those are two very different things.
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macrumors 65816
I find this odd, Apple states that even the first gen Apple TV can do 4K60. I don't use iMovie, are there other export options? The Apple TV is capable of viewing a variety of encoding formats, if you're viewing them via iTunes (or its replacement) all you'll really need is them to be "web optimized". Maybe that's all iMovie is doing for the ATV exports. You can easily convert a non-web-optimized video file into an optimized one. If you can export the video at 4K60, then you can just fix it up later, if needed.
This is debatable. Arguably, the 4K option has more pixels and thus can retain more detail, given the bitrate is high enough. Personally, I prefer 60 fps over 30, and would definitely go for a 1080p60 from a nice source over a 4K30.
It doesn't really matter, since you're halving the framerate. Going from say 60 to 24 is not a clean division and will mean that some frames must be duplicated or dropped.
It's not that simple and will depend entirely on the encoding settings. Since it's an iMovie preset, it will rely on what Apple has set up. I suggest you test it to find out.
Framerate has only a marginal effect on bitrate and filesize, the difference shouldn't very large at all.
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macrumors 65816
You don't see the advantage of a smoother video? We don't even need to get into gaming to see why.
The 30fps value was chosen to match the electrical grid, halved because of interlacing.
The 24fps standard was chosen because movie studios didn't want to waste film. It was the minimum which they could get by without noticeable flickering.
Neither of these values were chosen due to some biological optimum or "magical" artistic value. They were chosen because it made hardware or production cheaper, without making the resulting video look outright bad. Anyone who claims that 24 fps is needed because of the "cinematic" feel is just fooling themselves, you might as well argue that you need b&w, otherwise it's just not "cinematic".
We don't even need to survey the general population. TV manufacturers already know that the population prefers smoother video, that's why every demo video on store TVs is shot at high framerates and why so many TVs have motion smoothing enabled. People clearly prefer the smoother video, even if it's done by some algorithm and doesn't quite look perfect.
He never said that the AppleTV didn't do 60fps. Obviously it does.
Nope. None. Unless you have endless and massive linear PANS and ZOOMS, no one, and I mean no one will be the wiser. But sure, let's just pretend.
HUH?!
What exactly was "halved"? 😂
You just answered it yourself. Read the last sentence.
Complete nonsense. Tip: look up persistence of vision. 👍🏼
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macrumors 65816
Right, I was (wrongly) under the impression that iMovie was only exporting 30 fps for the Apple TV preset for reasons related to the Apple TV. I have learned that that is an apparent limitation of iMovie itself, rather than a limitation due to the export preset.
It's okay to admit you don't notice the difference. The good thing about it is those who do will notice and benefit, while you'll be none the wiser.
I can, and you've provided no evidence for your claim that "no one" will notice. I have the above examples I listed, Apple themselves with ProMotion and their dev documentation about UI responsiveness, displays have been sold for years with high refresh rates, there's a cult-like community obsessing over CRTs with their low-latency and higher refresh rates than LCDs, there's of course gaming.
If we get away from the mainstream TV/movie industry we can see plenty of YouTubers are filming and uploading content at 60fps. It looks great, and I always notice when I switch between watching 30/60fps channels. It's especially unfortunate when channels that use animations render them at such a low framerate.
The US AC grid runs at 60Hz. If you're in Europe this would be 50Hz and thus 25 fps for analogue TV. Which is where the 30fps for TV shows came from (and 25fps for European shows). Again, technical limitations.
The flickering, from the film projector. You are still watching film?
Okay? This doesn't discredit anything I said. It's simply a biological minimum. It's not an optimum. You can get by with stop-motion and flipbook style videos being seen as motion, doesn't mean they're smooth. Now that is an artistic style.
This reminds me of Apple's retina screens. You spend so long looking at the non-retina displays and then Apple comes out and claims they're so much better, but you don't believe them because you've spent so long with low DPI displays. Yet once you try it, you see the difference, what Apple means. Of course there are some that just don't, typically due to poor eyesight. But there's a reason even in the PC space Macs are known for their screen quality, particularly in the mid-2010s.
Thank you all for the helpful discussion and comments, and I'm sorry it's taken so long for me to respond. I have, however, now managed to shoot some test videos (with light and dark scenes , panning, zooming etc) with the two camcorders with the results fed directly into my LG 4K TV for comparison. The first was using my old Sony camcorder with the FH setting which is 1920 x 1080 60i 17Mbps. The second was using the newer Sony 4k camcorder but set at XAVC S HD 1920 x 1080 60 which the manual states is 50Mbps. The third was XAVC S 4K 3840 x 2160 30fps and 60Mbps. It would have been possible to shoot at 60 fps and 100Mbps but as iMovie does not allow file exports above 30fps I did not try this. The newer camcorder is a much higher spec model in terms of lens and sensor etc than the older one (and 3 times the list price when new) so it was not surprising that I could still see some small differences when comparing the two HD movies. Not enough on its own to justify the upgrade price though. But the 4k video was clearer, sharper and more detailed than the others and with a sharper image when I used the telephoto to zoom in on distant objects. So I will use this setting in future.
For speed and convenience I just used direct connections from the camcorders to the TV. I haven't yet uploaded the videos into iMovie, converted to mp4 and watched on Apple TV to see if the differences remain the same when viewed that way.
For speed and convenience I just used direct connections from the camcorders to the TV. I haven't yet uploaded the videos into iMovie, converted to mp4 and watched on Apple TV to see if the differences remain the same when viewed that way.