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Home: Video University Forums: Teaching Video Production:
iMovie2 and distortion of still images

X-carol_Siwinski
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Dec 17, 2003, 1:28 PM

Post #1 of 2 (982 views)
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iMovie2 and distortion of still images	Can't Post

I am using iMovie 2 and have for the past two years. i have produced many video albums using still digital images to be used at assemblies and to be given to students as an end of the year present.
: Up until this year we used older Sony digital cameras which took pictures at 640 by 480. The pictures looked OK. Now we have upgraded to various other digital cameras and have the abilty to produce pictures in various sizes the smallest being 1280 x 960. When I placed these pictures in iMovie2 and use the full screen view the pictures are completely pixelated.
: I also opened the pictures up in Fireworks and reduced the size to 640 by 480 and reimported them into iMovie and they are still pixelated. The same pictures used in powerpoint are beautifully clear.
: What is iMovie doing to these higher resoultion pictures and what can I do to correct the problem.
: I have many teachers who are taking pictures with these cameras with the idea of producing a video journal for their students and I am afraid all the pictures taken to date can't be used.
: Thanks in advance for any suggestions or information on where to go for help.
: carol
:

X-Doug_Graham
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Dec 30, 2003, 8:56 AM

Post #2 of 2 (981 views)
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Re: iMovie2 and distortion of still images	Can't Post

Carol,
I don't use iMovie, so this is just a guess. When you use a large format image in a video editing program, the software has to re-interpret the image into one that is "video sized"...640x480, or 720x486 for those working in DV and non-square pixels. This takes up considerable computing resources, and the software may be doing a "quick and dirty" job of it in providing the image displayed on the computer video overlay window.
The images may be perfectly clear when rendered and displayed on an NTSC television monitor. Try it and see. Another thing to try is to re-size the images to 720x540 (or some multiple of that) and try displaying them. This ratio allows for the 0.9 pixel aspect ratio (non-square pixels) of TV.
Also, get a copy of "iMovie2, The Missing Manual" from Amazon!
Regards,
Doug Graham