iMovie and iDVD question

bokapbokap
Posted:
in Mac Software edited January 2014
I just started to burn my iMovies to dvd with my new computer. G4 dual 1ghz. My camera is a Sony Digital Camcorder. When I am working on the movies they look great. But after I burn and play on my computer they look exactly like my old iMovies did when I saved to Quicktime and played at full screen. I thought with iDvd the movies were meant to be played back at full screen.

My workflow is to save my iMovie project and then open iDvd and import the saved quicktime file. Am I missing a step. In iMovie it says to just save project and then open iDvd.

When I play on my tv it looks ok but not like what I expect a dvd to look like. It looks like a quicktime movie played at full screen.

Thanks for any help.

Bob G

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 6
    cubedudecubedude Posts: 1,556member
    Check your camcorder settings. Maybe it allows you to record at a higher resolution.
  • Reply 2 of 6
    bokapbokap Posts: 19member
    It's not the camcorder settings because when I plug the cam directly into the TV the image is much better.

    Bob
  • Reply 3 of 6
    sapienssapiens Posts: 2member
    I Had the same problem because the movie I was working on in iMovie was in PAL format while iDVD was in the default mode of NTSC. Check it out. Changing the iDVD default to PAL did the trick.

    Also rememeber that if your movie is 60 minutes or longer then iDVD will automatically compress it, in order to fit it on the dvd disk, lowering the quality quite a lot.
  • Reply 4 of 6
    john whitneyjohn whitney Posts: 99member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by bokap

    I just started to burn my iMovies to dvd with my new computer. G4 dual 1ghz. My camera is a Sony Digital Camcorder. When I am working on the movies they look great. But after I burn and play on my computer they look exactly like my old iMovies did when I saved to Quicktime and played at full screen. I thought with iDvd the movies were meant to be played back at full screen.

    My workflow is to save my iMovie project and then open iDvd and import the saved quicktime file. Am I missing a step. In iMovie it says to just save project and then open iDvd.

    When I play on my tv it looks ok but not like what I expect a dvd to look like. It looks like a quicktime movie played at full screen.

    Thanks for any help.

    Bob G



    First off, realize your camcorder resolution is lower than that used to produce Hollywood-style movies. Also, I'd imagine iDVD will encode it to standard TV resolution of 640x480.



    I also use a Sony Digitial camcorder, iMovie, and iDVD. Watching the resulting DVD on a TV, I have no complaints about resolution. (The Sony produces a grainy image at times, depending on lighting, but that isn't Apple's fault). You might want to make sure to enable 16-bit audio on your camcorder. While Apple's latest iMovie patch makes 12-bit audio sync up better with the picture, it still doesn't do as well as 16-bit audio. By default, my camcorder was using 12-bit.



    Your workflow also seems a little strange. In iMovie, I just click the "iDVD" tab (lower right buttons). This allows me to put in chapters, and then directly launch iDVD. No exporting to Quicktime and reimporting is necessary.



    If you are exporting to anything but QuickTime DV (digital video), that could also cause significant problems in your final product. Exporting to another format would cause it to be compressed. iDVD would uncompress it, and then recompress it to MPEG-2. This would cause compression artifacts to be magnified.



    I've made about 5 hour-long movies using iMovie and iDVD, and I'll be happy to give you any help I can...



    John
  • Reply 5 of 6
    gardenofearthlydelightsgardenofearthlydelights Posts: 963member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by bokap



    My workflow is to save my iMovie project and then open iDvd and import the saved quicktime file. Am I missing a step. In iMovie it says to just save project and then open iDvd.

    When I play on my tv it looks ok but not like what I expect a dvd to look like. It looks like a quicktime movie played at full screen.

    Thanks for any help.

    Bob G



    I would agree with John Whitney, that your workflow is a bit strange. What version of iMovie/iDVD are you using? His method would be the preferable way, if you're using the latest versions.



    By saving it as a Quicktime movie from iMovie, and importing it into iDVD, you could be adding additional compression, reducing your video quality.



    The resolution of a NTSC DV video is something like 720x480. This look okay on tv, but lousy on a computer at full screen. If it looks fine on tv, then it should be okay.
  • Reply 6 of 6
    bokapbokap Posts: 19member
    I followed John's advice and now I am on track. I was making the mistake of saving my iMovie project and then importing that into iDVD.

    Thanks,

    Bob G
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