HELP Exporting Final Project iMovie 09.

[gusanitoverde]

I am making a software installer tutorial. It contains a lot of screenshots and screen video captures. It was a MAJOR nightmare to get the screenshots to look dull and pixelated because of resampling by iMovie HD. I got around that by using some sort of "hack" I found in other forums. Still, I could not work with the clips once they were imported.

Now I have iMovie 09. It imports the clips with no loss of resolution. It is beautiful. Half of the battle won. However, now my new nightmare is how to export the final project loosing no resolution or at least the least resolution so that the screencapture will be actually readable or not pixelated so much.

My company is asking me a 700 X 600 (preferible) since the installer is to be viewed on most common Windows PC's. I could go in more resolution, but this will be a widescreen aspect ratio and is not preferable.
I am also asked preferably for an MPEG-4 file. However, when I export, the resolution gets heavily pixelated and blurry to the point of being a useless video that looks more like I got it streamed at low resolution from a webpage.

Please help me out. I am so tired of this. What are the most optimum settings I could use to do this export without loosing resolution?

Thanks so much for any help given.

 

[arjen92]

700X600 will be the highest resolution (if it depends on your company). This is even smaller then your lowest resolution. Don't forget; normal video always has the resolution 480x560. So that's why it get's pixelated. You can try to export it in HD. You can get the maximum resolution 1920x1080.

When I make a tutorial, I set my screen to the lowest resolution and zoom in on stuff that needs to be seen. An example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLoJEngOcBM&feature=channel_page
I'm dutch, that explains the language. I did this video with a resolution of 800x600.

 

[Bellfleur]

How do you export in HD format? I have imported HD video footage from Sony HD camera

 

[Fizzoid]

How do you export in HD format?

By choosing the HD option

 

[Bellfleur]

Is this only is IMovie 09 or will the old version of IMovie HD do this also.

If it only works in IMovie 09 then is there a way to freeze frame to take still shots in IMovie 09?

Sorry but very new to all of this.

 

[dalvin200]

Is this only is IMovie 09 or will the old version of IMovie do this also.

If it only works in IMovie 09 then is there a way to freeze frame to take still shots in IMovie 09?

Sorry but very new to all of this.

the HD option is only in iMovie 09.. you can take still shots by i think choosing "create still.." from one of the menu's..
sorry not at my mac at the mo so can't tell you for sure exactly how to do it.

 

[Bellfleur]

If I use IMovie 09 will it fix the problem when I 'export' of having the tempo (speed of the moving objects)increase in the finished video??

 

[dalvin200]

If I use IMovie 09 will it fix the problem when I 'export' of having the tempo (speed of the moving objects)increase in the finished video??

ive never come across this... please explain

 

[arjen92]

you mean that when you play it back in iMovie it slows down. That's because it needs to render some stuff. When you export it, it will have the "expected" speed.

And I believe you can export HD in iMovie HD. Why else is it called iMovie HD.

 

[gusanitoverde]

Still experimenting...

When exporting using quicktime, that's when the video gets totally messed up. See? it is so different when you are exporting screenshots and other computer processed images. They look horrible and pixelated!

 

[xStep]

My iMovie Export Guide may be helpful. And yes, iMovie HD can export to HD.

The rest of this is just things I've read or ideas to try...

From what I've seen mentioned in the past, people pre-plan for the intent of their destination. If they are creating a DVD, then they perform screen captures at 640x480 and produce stills of that size too. When they want to focus one an area, they zoom in during a screen capture. From the sounds of it though, you already have the content.

If your input is HD and you are shrinking the image size, you have to expect that the sharpness of the image will be reduced. This will be noticeable on fine detail items such as text. When performing screen captures, zooming in is a good way to reduce that effect in your final product. Perhaps you can try this with your HD content and it might work it self out during the export process.

For the still images, you might be better off resizing them before import to your project size. If you are going to zoom into an image, then make it large enough so that that zoomed image natively fits your project or export size. Oh, import a lossless format such as PNG since JPEGs are lossy may give an less desirable result.

That small size reminds me of my work computer of 1990. Check out statistics such as w3schools browser display settings for what to expect from your audience.

To reduce the time of experimentation, I'd work with a small sample of the content and get the work flow down. It sounds like you have a lot of experimenting to do since you have multiple inputs and a limited editor in that iMovie 09 only has two project sizes of interest and likely the HD one is going to be your choice.