My Mac iMovie slideshow for my wedding looks terrible!

jkarolyi · 04:27 PM

Hi All,

Just put the finishing touches on the photo slideshow I made using iMovie HD (latest version). I scanned some prints from our childhoods pictures at 200dpi using Photoshop and saved them all as .jpgs, and they are roughly the same dimensions.

While I was bringing in photos from iPhoto, I noticed that some pictures with the same characteristics and sizing (according to Photoshop) will look completely pixelated once brought into iMovie, while others look perfectly fine. My "Mac expert" co-worker said that this was normal with iMovie preview mode, but would look fine once burned through iDVD. Nope, same randomly pixellated pictures. Not just minor pixelation, we're talking to where you can't make out a person's eyes! He's stumped too.

I tried exporting as a quicktime movie, and using OneStep DVD setting in iDVD, but nothing helped. What am I missing here?

One of the Mac guys at work suggested I use iMovie instead of Windows Movie Maker which I had good luck with. I wanted to try using a Mac for a change (we have a nice one here at the help desk), but I'm starting to think I made the wrong decision.

Thanks for any help...wedding is this Sunday!

Aurel · Aurel's Garage

I second your co-worker advice: if you`re gonna go Mac, go Mac all the way. Anything windows ported to Mac is crap, I know it by experience with windows office Mac. The beauty of the Mac is in the software, so use iMovie.

Aurel

HardDrive · 06-07-2007, 05:33 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Aurel
I second your co-worker advice: if you`re gonna go Mac, go Mac all the way. Anything windows ported to Mac is crap, I know it by experience with windows office Mac. The beauty of the Mac is in the software, so use iMovie.

Aurel

Yeah, thats really great technical advice.

Trying importing the photos in a different format. I would start with .png, then try .tif.

.jpg is a compressed format, and the slideshow software likely further compresses the photos to decrease the overall size of the slideshow, leading to them being very pixelated.

stomachmonkey · 06-07-2007, 05:43 PM

I'm confused on your workflow.

You scanned them all at the same time using the same settings. You did this in Windows or on the Mac?

You brought all the photos into iPhoto to dump into iMovie to export in iDVD.

How did the look in iPhoto?

Why not build the slideshow in iPhoto and dump straight to iDVD?

What are you doing in iMovie?

And where does Windows Movie Maker factor into all this?

Scott

stomachmonkey · 06-07-2007, 05:47 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by HardDrive
Yeah, thats really great technical advice.

Trying importing the photos in a different format. I would start with .png, then try .tif.

.jpg is a compressed format, and the slideshow software likely further compresses the photos to decrease the overall size of the slideshow, leading to them being very pixelated.

Yeah but it sounds like a lot of compression. Im guessing that some of the images are not imported, rather he's got the preview icon part of the file. The resource fork, not the data fork.

nostatic · nostatic's Garage

yeah, sounds like either blowing up the icon (which would be *really* pixelated) or your scan wasn't set up like you thought for some of the images.

Scanning can be a black art at times...

Porsche · Porsche's Garage

From my experience with iMovie on Mac, it doesn't deal well with static JPG images - high-res images when changed to a static image in iMovie ends up looking grainy - you need to switch on the "Ken Burns effect" and in the slideshow, do the moving "zoom in" thing. While dynamic the image looks fine that way.

Burning a slideshow directly using iDVD via the slideshow feature iDVD has gives you really bad grainy photos when you play that slideshow back even if you use high-res digital photos - you can however choose under options to copy the high-res files onto the DVD as well, and view them if your DVD player can play image files directly.

Hope that helps - I've been burning presentations using iMovie and iDVD for a myself and friends for a while now - I'm no expert, just an amateur user.

jkarolyi · 09:38 AM

Thanks for the advice guys! I'm going to put a ken burns effect on them to see if that fixes it.

>You scanned them all at the same time using the same settings. You did this in Windows or on the Mac?

Mac Photoshop 7

>You brought all the photos into iPhoto to dump into iMovie to export in iDVD.

Correct. This is how I was told it was supposed to be done. Is there a better workflow?

How did the look in iPhoto?

Great with no pixellation.

>Why not build the slideshow in iPhoto and dump straight to iDVD?
What are you doing in iMovie?

I used iMovie so I could time the music with the photos...can't do that with iPhoto, right? The iMovie interface is awesome and easy to use...but the end product is the problem.

>And where does Windows Movie Maker factor into all this?

I had used it a couple years ago with good results...in hindsight I should have just stuck with what works instead of trying something new.

stomachmonkey · 06-08-2007, 12:19 PM

OK,

I use all the pro apps so have less familiarity with the iApps but here is what I think is happening.

Files have a "preview" built into them. It's what gives them the icon that you see to visually distinguish them.

I think that for some reason you are only seeing the preview data and not the full file data. Try re-importing them.

iMovie, it's used to make videos. Videos are diplayed primarily on TV. TV's and monitors have an average resolution of 70 or so PPI. On a standard SD TV a 72 DPI file will display the same as a 300 DPI file regardless of how big the screen is.

There is no benefit to sending it a hi res file, it's incapable of displaying it.

Why is that important? You may be sending the SW a file larger than it would ever expect and it does not know what to do with it so it reverts to using the icon info as a proxy.

So somewhere along the line something has to determine what data (pixels) to "toss out".

Personally I'd address that at the scanning stage or in Photoshop.

Curious, are the pixelated files the largest out of the batch?

In iPhoto you can adjust the speed of slides on an individual basis. Combine it with the ability to control the speed of the transition and you should be fine without iMovie.

The other problem that I see with iMovie is the destination profile.

If you are going to display on an LCD you want to output de-interlaced. Standard TV you want interlaced. It's not a disaster if you don't but it's one more thing that affects quality.

It does make difference.

Scott

jkarolyi · 06-09-2007, 03:38 PM

>From my experience with iMovie on Mac, it doesn't deal well with static JPG images - high-res images when changed to a static image in iMovie ends up looking grainy - you need to switch on the "Ken Burns effect" and in the slideshow, do the moving "zoom in" thing. While dynamic the image looks fine that way.

Yep...this did the trick!!! Changed all the photos to use the Ken Burns effect and even if I set the zoom rate to zero they looked worlds better! Really strange. Thanks so much for helping my presentation...the OT Forum saves the day again! Wish me luck on my wedding tomorrow...

Porsche · Porsche's Garage

Quote:

Originally posted by jkarolyi
>From my experience with iMovie on Mac, it doesn't deal well with static JPG images - high-res images when changed to a static image in iMovie ends up looking grainy - you need to switch on the "Ken Burns effect" and in the slideshow, do the moving "zoom in" thing. While dynamic the image looks fine that way.

Yep...this did the trick!!!

Great!

How did the wedding go?