imovie saving without quality loss

[cokeacola]

i have a lot of good quality mpeg-2 files ,when i import them into imovie hd to edit them, what is the best option for saving them once there edited ?

i dont want to have a great loss in quality hence im using imovie hd and not imovie 8 as 8 only saves in mp4 and there is a great loss in quality

thanks in advance

 

[ChrisA]

i have a lot of good quality mpeg-2 files ,when i import them into imovie hd to edit them, what is the best option for saving them once there edited ?

i dont want to have a great loss in quality hence im using imovie hd and not imovie 8 as 8 only saves in mp4 and there is a great loss in quality

thanks in advance

If quality is the main concern, I think you'd be best off it you trans coded the files before you edited them. The editing process itself is what messes up the quality of the mpeg2 files.

Every tme you cut mpeg2 the sftware has to make a new keyframe and recompute all the difference frames. So you have unavoidable generational loss, so convert before editing.

 

[theBB]

If quality is the main concern, I think you'd be best off it you trans coded the files before you edited them.

iMovie cannot edit mpeg2 directly, so he has to convert before editing anyways.

You can export it as .mov file with .dv video format if you go through expert settings. That is about as lossless as it gets, but takes up a lot of space. If you export using MP4 with H264 at 1500kbps or even 2500kbps video bit rate, you should not see much if any compression. You can also try AppleTV preset as well.

 

[rotlex]

iMovie cannot edit mpeg2 directly, so he has to convert before editing anyways.

You can export it as .mov file with .dv video format if you go through expert settings. That is about as lossless as it gets, but takes up a lot of space. If you export using MP4 with H264 at 1500kbps or even 2500kbps video bit rate, you should not see much if any compression. You can also try AppleTV preset as well.

Have a quick question regarding the Apple TV preset if someone knows. I recently realized it was even available, but am wondering what I'm doing wrong, as not matter what I run through it, including 1080i shot\captured HDV video, it always brings everything down to 960x540? I thought 1280x720 would be the standard for output on this, and there does not appear to be a way to changed the settings?

Thanks, and sorry to thread jack.

 

[ftaok]

i dont want to have a great loss in quality hence im using imovie hd and not imovie 8 as 8 only saves in mp4 and there is a great loss in quality

iMovie08 is no different than iMovieHD in output formats. You can output your edited movie in whatever format/bitrate you want ... well, within reason.

If you don't mind huge files, output the movies as DV.

 

[cokeacola]

iMovie08 is no different than iMovieHD in output formats. You can output your edited movie in whatever format/bitrate you want...

i must be missing something because when i go to export the finished movie clip in imovie 8 its options are only the presets ie tiny/mobile /large etc

could you please tell me what im doing wrong

 

[cokeacola]

think i have got it

the of advice from theBB about the video bit rate, 2500 works fine and advice about using the export using quicktime helped

thank you all for your contribution

im now a imovie 8 fan again