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GRuizMD

macrumors regular
Original poster
Aug 30, 2007
151
0
I have a Canon HF10, recording on FXP and CINEMA quality. It is supposed to be Full HD. I download video into iMovie8 and Select to import video as Full Quality, but once I get the video, the quality is reduced to Large... Please Help
 
Are your freaking-out over how your video looks in iMovie? You need to understand that iMovie is an editor, not a player. Rendering video is resource intensive. Rendering HD video is probably four times as resource intensive, if not more so. iMovie's display function is intended to allow you to edit your video. It is not intended for final viewing. There are other Mac applications that will display your finished product in all of its glorious resolution.
 
Are your freaking-out over how your video looks in iMovie? You need to understand that iMovie is an editor, not a player. Rendering video is resource intensive. Rendering HD video is probably four times as resource intensive, if not more so. iMovie's display function is intended to allow you to edit your video. It is not intended for final viewing. There are other Mac applications that will display your finished product in all of its glorious resolution.

I know, I'm not talking about playing the video on iMovie, its about iMovie's processing, the problem is that my recordings are HD, after editing the video in iMovie, the final product is not. Its like iMovie decreases the quality of the video throughout the process, my maximum resolution after processing in iMovie is less than the original recording.
 
iMovie does not support 1920x1080, so everything is reduced to 1440x1080. This is the same as the XP+ setting on the camera, so you might as well just use that to speed up the import process.

The other option is to use half the full resolution (960x540). This is great if you just plan on making DVDs, because the files are a lot smaller and export a lot faster. If yours are being imported in this setting, you need to change it in the iMovie preferences, and again when you import.

Right click on one of your clips in iMovie and pick show in finder. Open it with quicktime and see what the real resolution is.
 
iMovie does not support 1920x1080, so everything is reduced to 1440x1080. This is the same as the XP+ setting on the camera, so you might as well just use that to speed up the import process.

:(:(:( mmm So that is the answer to my question! Darn!

Thanks though. My 50 inch TV's max resolution is 1080i, at 720P everything looks pretty good tho, probably if I put one of this movies on my PS3 it will look as good as any DVD....But Im greedy LOL, maybe in the future will look for a 3rd party solution that does not degrade quality....

Thank you for the prompt answer.... This forum is great, full of people willing to help noobs like me....
 
same here!!

When I export in "full quality", quality is clearly lost :mad: and I'm dealing with 640 x 480 standard definition video.

Is there any difference between DV and mp4 when you first create your project? I chose mp4.
 
same here!!

When I export in "full quality", quality is clearly lost :mad: and I'm dealing with 640 x 480 standard definition video.

Is there any difference between DV and mp4 when you first create your project? I chose mp4.

If you are importing from a camcorder always import using the DV codec. MP4 is not an editing codec at all.
 
same here!!

When I export in "full quality", quality is clearly lost :mad: and I'm dealing with 640 x 480 standard definition video.

Is there any difference between DV and mp4 when you first create your project? I chose mp4.

The default "sharing" options in iMovie are pretty bad. They try to keep a small file size so people who dont know much about video can email and upload the videos to the internet. If you want to export better quality files, then pick the export using quicktime option. This lets you specify the codec and bitrate, and you can get much better results.
 
If you are importing from a camcorder always import using the DV codec. MP4 is not an editing codec at all.

no, I'm just gathering clips from various tennis videos and putting them into a timeline. Is DV codec better than the mp4 (when you first open your project)?
 
What format and resolution were they originally?

they are from various original files. Some of them are XVID avi's and some are x264 mp4s.

But I used QT pro to save each point as a mov file and then used QT sync to resize/crop them to 640 x 360. The original resolutions were usually 512 x 384 or 720 x 480, plus others.
 
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