Export lossless video with iMovie?

[ThePiratkapten]

Hi!

I wonder if it is possible to export a movie project without compressing it. It would be a lot faster than encoding it to h.264, right? I want to do this because then I can encode the video with Handbrake on my Windows desktop. It's much faster than my MBP from 2009. By the way, I am using the latest iMovie version from App Store.

Thank you

 

[talmy]

It's hard to find anything about iMovie. I did determine, from experimentation, that it appears to convert to 1080p at half resolution (call it "540p") on import, which is certainly lossy and ends up being the best it can do. Forget about export! I did videos with 720p source and export and still internally it was 540p!

I got much better (and quicker) results when I bought FCPX and Compressor. This also uses all the cores in my MBP or iMac, which iMovie doesn't do. It cuts from the source media directly and exports to Apple ProRes -- I don't see any loss at all.

 

[Dave Braine]

Instead of using the Export Movie option in the Share Menu, use the Export Using Quicktime option. Using the Apple Intermediate Codec setting will give you an uncompressed export. The DV.... settings may well do as well, but I haven't used those.

 

[SonicAwareness]

<removed>

 

[SonicAwareness]

Instead of using the Export Movie option in the Share Menu, use the Export Using Quicktime option. Using the Apple Intermediate Codec setting will give you an uncompressed export. The DV.... settings may well do as well, but I haven't used those.

This used to be true. At some point this summer, QuickTime updated and no longer does lossless exports in 4K, regardless if you select HEVC or H264 option during the export.

It really sucks that this tool is gone.