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Boondoggle · Jul 1, 2003, 01:47 PM

I'm getting ugly imports of uncompressed 640x480 .mov files into iMovie... Is this because the DV format is lossy?

The odd thing is that when I create the movie at 1280x960 the imports do look a little better...

Is there any solution to this?

OwlBoy · Jul 1, 2003, 03:01 PM

Wha?

Hmm, well, iMovie imports video @ 720 x 420 the Stardard DV res.

What do you mean you imported it at 1280x960 with iMovie?

-Owl

OwlBoy · Jul 1, 2003, 03:04 PM

Oh I get it.

ok, so your importing video clips, ok.

Well, one thing that is happening is the 640x480 is being stretched to 720x480.

Thats why the video that is bigger looks better, it is being scaled down with extra info making the scale work nice.

But the 640x480 is being streched, its using what little info it has to make a bigger copy.

Also, to answer your question, the DV format is lossy in some ways, though I only know of the fact that its colors are not quite as vivid as uncompressed video.

-Owl

scottiB · Jul 1, 2003, 03:27 PM

DV (it is lossy but only at the first compression--anything will be lossy from purely uncompressed QT) codec looks crappy on monitors, but fine on televison. DV has rectangular (non-square) pixels--hence the 720x480.

What are you using to compress to DV? Are these still frames or uncompressed QT?

dlefebvre · Jul 1, 2003, 04:02 PM

The DV codec compress the image to a ratio of 5:1 (approx). A 5min DV file with audio takes about 1 Gb. An uncompress 5min NTSC D1 file with audio takes about 5 Gb. So yes it's lossy. It still does a great job. It outperforms by far old 2:1 Avid codecs.
About your problem. Stretching a 640x480 to a 720x480 file will bring you to jaggy city. Try reexporting your 1280x960 movie at 720x480 with a non-square pixel setting.

Boondoggle · Jul 1, 2003, 08:35 PM

Thanks for the suggestions!

I tried 720x480, but I could not figure out how to set it for non-square pixels. It still looks pretty bad imported into iMovie. Seems like a significant loss of resolution and very bad anti-aliasing.

I'm making animations in Poser 4 and would like to edit them with iMovie and burn them to DVD.

First I get my animation all set up in Poser, then make a quicktime movie of the animation. I've tried a few different codecs, but so far uncompressed at 1280x960 provided the best quality after importing into iMovie, although there is still some stripeing of large single color areas. Maybe I need to set my colors up differently...

Another possible problem is that Poser 4 is an old classic app, and I'm not sure that I've got the latest and greatest codecs in the classic version of QT on this system. I'll check that.

Odly enough, there is an option to export directly to DV-NTSC, and even at 720x480 it looks like crap both as a QT file in QT player and when imported into iMovie.

I'm confused.

direktor · Jul 1, 2003, 10:09 PM

Originally posted by Boondoggle:
Thanks for the suggestions!

I tried 720x480, but I could not figure out how to set it for non-square pixels. It still looks pretty bad imported into iMovie. Seems like a significant loss of resolution and very bad anti-aliasing.

I'm making animations in Poser 4 and would like to edit them with iMovie and burn them to DVD.

First I get my animation all set up in Poser, then make a quicktime movie of the animation. I've tried a few different codecs, but so far uncompressed at 1280x960 provided the best quality after importing into iMovie, although there is still some stripeing of large single color areas. Maybe I need to set my colors up differently...

Another possible problem is that Poser 4 is an old classic app, and I'm not sure that I've got the latest and greatest codecs in the classic version of QT on this system. I'll check that.

Odly enough, there is an option to export directly to DV-NTSC, and even at 720x480 it looks like crap both as a QT file in QT player and when imported into iMovie.

I'm confused.

Export your animations to 720x480 DV codec, 29.97fps, best quality. Audio, if any, should be 48K, 16bit uncompressed. QT will play DV codec streams that deviate somewhat from the standard specs (different framerates, odd samplerate audio), but other programs can choke on it, not to mention camcorders when you output via firewire.

This is then your standard everyday DV stream. Import into iMovie and edit away.

The DV will look not as nice as it really it should in iMovie, because QT takes shortcuts to decode DV onscreen that make it blurrier. Outputting the same file out firewire to a camcorder (and later or simultaneously viewing on an NTSC monitor) will look superb, though.

Axo1ot1 · Jul 2, 2003, 01:55 PM

Originally posted by Boondoggle:
I tried 720x480, but I could not figure out how to set it for non-square pixels. It still looks pretty bad imported into iMovie. Seems like a significant loss of resolution and very bad anti-aliasing.

Are you looking at this in the imovie canvas window or on an external moniter? iMovie video does look crappy on the computer, but often looks fine when played back on an external monitor.