[quadraphonic]

Hey guys,
I'm putting together a slideshow in iMovie for my wedding this coming weekend. What is the best way for me to save it, run it, prep my PB, etc.. so it can run with minimal or no difficulties?

[Old Toad]

With iMovie, import the stills from iPhoto (but crop to 640 x480 or a 4:3 ratio before) where you can add subtitles, multiple music tracks, transitions and then export to full quality Quicktime. Then you can play it with your QT Player full screen on your PB or project if you have the gear.

Depending on time, here's a trick from one of the iMovie gurus on maximizing still image quality in iMovie. Just ignore the references to iDVD.

How to maximize still image quality in iMovie 4.0: By Karl Petersen


There are at least two ways to avoid the problem in iMovie.

1. Never press the Create iDVD Project button and render the stills. Instead, drag the project.mov into the iDVD window.

2. Use the Ken Burns effect to create a slight zoom-out clip. Use a Start zoom of 1.02, Finish zoom of 1.00, with a 10 second duration. Trim off (at least) the last second of the rendered clip (where all the zoom occurs) to make a "still". What remains is a superb quality clip, even better than Still Life's, which is good. The Ken Burns clip burns a DVD that's perfect, better than all other clips.


MORE DETAIL

1. In iMovie preferences (playback quality section) turn on both "High quality (better image)" AND "Enhanced video playback". Otherwise the movie iMovie sends to iDVD is not best quality.

2. Force the Ken Burns Effect to render your still while importing it. For rendering to occur, you must configure Ken Burns to create an animated zoom or animated pan.

To make a high quality rendered clip of your still image, do this:
a. Turn on the Ken Burns Effect.
b. To discard (any) earlier pan setting, press the Start button and drag the zoom thumb all the way left, then press the Finish button and drag the zoom thumb all the way left.
c. Click the Start button. Wait for any animation to finish. Drag the zoom thumb to 1.02. (Do not type in the box.)
d. Click the Finish button. Drag the zoom thumb to 1.00.
e. Drag the Duration thumb to 10 seconds.
f. Press the Apply button or drag the image to the timeline.
g. When the clip is rendered, trim off the last second (or more, if not needed). That's where all the zoom is. What's left is a very high quality "still" clip of your image.

3. Set iDVD preferences to burn the DVD at best quality.


As preventative maintenance this week I'd run either Cocktail, Onyx or Panther Cache Cleaner to lean up the cache files and memory swap files. Also I'd run DeLocalizer to remove the unneeded language modules and give you as much HD free space as possible. I saved 900+MB the first time I ran it. It will run under 10.3 if that's what you have.

Hope this has been of some help. Good luck and congratulations.

[quadraphonic]

Great.. thanks for the tips. Being my first big project, I hope to make it run as smoothly as possible!