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Up to Discussions in Mac 911
15 Replies Last post: Jun 24, 2007 4:44 PM by Neil_Anderson   1 2 Previous Next
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Macworld.com
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Feb 6, 2004
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Jun 18, 2007 11:30 AM

Mac 911 Weblog: iMovie and the fuzzy still

iMovie’s stills too blurry for you? You can make some improvements but, the truth is, iMovie may not be the tool for you. more
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Click to view flybynight's profile Member
flybynight
531 posts since
Jul 21, 2006
1. Jun 18, 2007 2:42 PM in response to: Macworld.com
Re: Mac 911 Weblog: iMovie and the fuzzy still
I haven't tried the iDVD slideshow method. How much control do you have? That's one of the things I like about iMovie is that if you want a certain transition or cut to happen in sync with your movie, you can do that. They don't all have to be the same time per image. Maybe you have a bunch of images to go through, but you want the viewer to have a little more time with a few images here and there... I'm not sure if iDVD can do that, or if it is just X seconds per image, and that's that.
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Click to view hillstones's profile Member
hillstones
376 posts since
Sep 18, 2004
2. Jun 18, 2007 3:04 PM in response to: Macworld.com
Re: Mac 911 Weblog: iMovie and the fuzzy still
The pixelated still images in iMovie to iDVD is caused by a bug that Apple has not fixed. When you complete your project in iMovie (when you have still images mixed in with your video) and send it to iDVD, you get a prompt asking you to render your images for the highest quality. DO NOT RENDER THE IMAGES. Click Proceed without Rendering. That is the irony, the software claims the rendering produces the highest quality images, when it actually pixelates them.

I burned two DVD's and was surprised at the poor quality of the still images in the video. Prior versions of iMovie did not have this problem. Browsing Apple's discussion boards solved the problem with the above tip.

Thankfully, I did not save my project after completing the render, so I was able to open it again and choose not to render the video for iDVD. The resulting DVD does not have pixelated images in the video or the slideshow (I did the slideshow in iDVD).
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Click to view hillstones's profile Member
hillstones
376 posts since
Sep 18, 2004
3. Jun 18, 2007 3:14 PM in response to: flybynight
Re: Mac 911 Weblog: iMovie and the fuzzy still
Quote:<hr />
I haven't tried the iDVD slideshow method. How much control do you have? That's one of the things I like about iMovie is that if you want a certain transition or cut to happen in sync with your movie, you can do that. They don't all have to be the same time per image. Maybe you have a bunch of images to go through, but you want the viewer to have a little more time with a few images here and there... I'm not sure if iDVD can do that, or if it is just X seconds per image, and that's that.

<hr />


Doing a slideshow in iDVD works very well. You can arrange the images in any order, and you can choose the duration to fit to a particular song. However, it would be nice if you can choose more than one song to go back to back for a longer slideshow with many images. In that case, I use a sound editing program to copy and paste two songs as one, and then choose that file for the slideshow. You can pick your transition, but you can only choose one type for the entire slideshow. Fine for me since I just like the fade.
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Click to view Chris Breen's profile Macworld Editorial
Chris Breen
2,825 posts since
Dec 11, 2000
4. Jun 18, 2007 3:16 PM in response to: flybynight
Re: Mac 911 Weblog: iMovie and the fuzzy still
Quote:<hr />
I haven't tried the iDVD slideshow method. How much control do you have

<hr />


Very little, unfortunately. You can have only a single kind of transition for the slideshow and each slide will show for the same amount of time -- 1, 3, 5, or 10 seconds (or you can configure it so the viewer has to push the Next button to advance to the next slide).
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Click to view Chris Breen's profile Macworld Editorial
Chris Breen
2,825 posts since
Dec 11, 2000
5. Jun 18, 2007 3:18 PM in response to: hillstones
Re: Mac 911 Weblog: iMovie and the fuzzy still
Quote:<hr />
DO NOT RENDER THE IMAGES.

<hr />


You're correct. If you don't render the images, they do look better in iDVD. I still find those unrendered images blurrier than the images I import directly into an iDVD-created slideshow.
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Click to view dwayne_bradley's profile New Member
dwayne_bradley
12 posts since
Sep 16, 2004
6. Jun 18, 2007 3:23 PM in response to: Chris Breen
Re: Mac 911 Weblog: iMovie and the fuzzy still
This very thing is why I ditched using iMovie years ago and stepped up to Final Cut Express. Needless to say, working with stills in FCE is a little different than in iMovie, but I have WAY more control over what I want to do with them and the overall slideshow/project ends up looking much better.

Just my $0.02.
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Click to view hillstones's profile Member
hillstones
376 posts since
Sep 18, 2004
7. Jun 18, 2007 4:04 PM in response to: Chris Breen
Re: Mac 911 Weblog: iMovie and the fuzzy still
Quote:<hr />
Quote:<hr />
DO NOT RENDER THE IMAGES.

<hr />


You're correct. If you don't render the images, they do look better in iDVD. I still find those unrendered images blurrier than the images I import directly into an iDVD-created slideshow.

<hr />


Chris, you are also correct. My example specifically pertained to adding still images within the video footage, not creating a slideshow in iMovie. I inserted still images within my video footage, then moved it to iDVD. Once in iDVD, I created a separate slideshow. The still images within the video footage looked terrible (when rendered by iMovie), but the slideshow was very clear since it was done in iDVD. Once I chose not to render the images in the video footage, they were sharper. I still think prior versions of iMovie handled still images within the video much better.
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Click to view kman1959's profile New Member
kman1959
1 posts since
Jun 18, 2007
8. Jun 18, 2007 4:07 PM in response to: Chris Breen
Re: Mac 911 Weblog: iMovie and the fuzzy still
iDVD also treats each slide as a chapter, so if you have more than 99 slides some DVD players will not go beyond 99 chapters and return to the beginning.
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Click to view meta's profile New Member
meta
74 posts since
Sep 9, 2004
9. Jun 18, 2007 5:14 PM in response to: Macworld.com
Re: Mac 911 Weblog: iMovie and the fuzzy still
I think that exporting your project to MPEG-4 is a bad idea if your source material is DV. You're introducing a whole separate compress/decompress process, with corresponding artifacts.
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Click to view lepidoptera's profile New Member
lepidoptera
1 posts since
Jun 18, 2007
10. Jun 18, 2007 6:14 PM in response to: Chris Breen
Re: Mac 911 Weblog: iMovie and the fuzzy still
Also, once you've created a slideshow in iDVD can you then export it so it can also be used as a stand alone slideshow or is it always stuck as part of a DVD? I've thus far failed to find a way to do this. Any ideas?
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Click to view Chris Breen's profile Macworld Editorial
Chris Breen
2,825 posts since
Dec 11, 2000
11. Jun 18, 2007 6:47 PM in response to: lepidoptera
Re: Mac 911 Weblog: iMovie and the fuzzy still
Quote:<hr />
Also, once you've created a slideshow in iDVD can you then export it so it can also be used as a stand alone slideshow or is it always stuck as part of a DVD?

<hr />


Sorta. When you burn it (either to a real disc or as an image file) that slideshow will be converted to a .vob file, which, using a program like VisualHub, you can convert to a movie file playable by QuickTime.

Problem is that -- at least in my tests -- the duration gets funky. Instead of showing the slides for 3 seconds, as designated in iDVD, they whip by. And if you've created a slideshow linked to audio, you wind up sitting on the transitions instead of the actual images.
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Click to view hillstones's profile Member
hillstones
376 posts since
Sep 18, 2004
12. Jun 18, 2007 7:15 PM in response to: kman1959
Re: Mac 911 Weblog: iMovie and the fuzzy still
Quote:<hr />
iDVD also treats each slide as a chapter, so if you have more than 99 slides some DVD players will not go beyond 99 chapters and return to the beginning.

<hr />


Some DVD players could exhibit that problem. With some players, it will continue past 99 chapters, but it changes from Title 1 to Title 2 and the track numbers reset. The downside is that any music playing will have a 1-2 second break during the title change. This was Apple's solution for having more than 99 photos in a single slideshow. I guess some DVD players don't acknowledge the title change.
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Click to view neutrino23's profile New Member
neutrino23
22 posts since
Aug 7, 2005
13. Jun 18, 2007 11:46 PM in response to: Macworld.com
Re: Mac 911 Weblog: iMovie and the fuzzy still
We've wrestled with this problem a lot. We haven't done this lately but one thing that helped was to use the Ken Burns effect. Several people noticed that during a Ken Burns pan the image looks nice. If you setup a Ken Burns pan as short as possible, one pixel if you can, then choose the time duration you want some people say that fixed the problem. Again, I haven't looked at this for a long time but that was one solution. Another suggestion was to resize the image to the correct size before importing it into iMovie. That would be to set the image to exactly 640 x 480 before brining it into iMovie.
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Click to view macnews's profile Member
macnews
241 posts since
Jan 11, 2005
14. Jun 19, 2007 1:30 PM in response to: neutrino23
Re: Mac 911 Weblog: iMovie and the fuzzy still
I run in to this problem all the time with iMovie. The iDvd solution is ok, but I normally want much more control over my slide show than what iDvd gives me.

Final cut is great and now my only means of doing movies. Markers are a God send to sync pics with a soundtrack. I have much more control when I create my own "Ken Burns" effects (another area where I often run in to problems with a pan moving slow and then changing speed at the last second). You still have to export as a quicktime movie to get it to work with iDvd but at least I have more control, and two or more video tracks is VERY nice to work with.

I know this doesn't help those who use iMovie but if you are using it a lot, you may want to consider Final Cut Express. If you are a casual user, the solutions mentioned above should reduce these problems and give you an acceptable product at the end.
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