[headbirth]

Hi, I just plugged my brother-inlaws camcorder and used iMovie to grab the footage. Easy, went of without a hitch.

However, I notice that playing back the footage at full screen 1024x768 is low quality and when I render to a quicktime file the size is 780x???. is there an option I'm missing? I can only image viewing this on a TV would be even worse.

help?

[scottiB]

DV video is (if I recall correctly) 720x480. When you play it at 1024x768 is will pixelate a bit (like having an 800x600 image as a fullscreen desktop picture on a 1024x768 monitor). This is not a concern when creating a DVD or exporting back to a camcorder since, in America, broadcast resolution (NTSC) is 640x480 (non-HD).

[headbirth]

Ahhh.....interesting. Thanks for the info!

[headbirth]

Oh...by the way, what is PALs image size?

[zigzag]

It could also be due to limitations in your machine and/or monitor. Machines with less than a 350mhz processor have an option in iMovie preferences for smooth/blurry playback or jerky/sharp playback. They aren't powerful enough to provide both smooth and sharp playback.

Plus, as scott said, if you blow a DV up to full-screen on a computer monitor it'll look grainier. But if you play it back on a TV it'll look fine.

QuickTime movies are compressed and/or have lower frame rates so the video usually looks even worse than in iMovie.

DV resolution is actually 720x480 NTSC (720x576 for PAL). iMovie and TV screens artificially make it appear at the 4:3 ratio of 640x480. But if you export to a full-size, uncompressed QT movie, it'll be at the actual 720x480 NTSC (720x576 PAL) resolution. That might explain the different resolution numbers you saw in QT.