iMovie questions

[Dave Perry]

Toast is an authoring tool, albiet, a simple one. It does fine for making quick and easy DVDs with simple menus. It'll create a disc iamge, a video TS folder, or burn a DVD, however, it won't create an MPEG 2 stand alone file for you.

BitVice is your best bet for that if all you need is an MPEG 2.

[Stephen Warriner]

Thanks Dave-

A stand alone MPEG-2 file is what I need. It is going on a server. I will try BitVice.

[Joe Calalang]

My first post. :) Hopefully, that subject heading will make Searches easier for noobies like me.

Anyway, my camera is a GL2 and my issue was with the voices being a half second ahead of the video. I did a search here for a solution and I tried a lot of them. The simplest and easiest one was to extract audio and the sync problems were solved. I right clicked on the clip, selected "Extract Audio" and it automatically pinned itself to the beginning of the clip. Simple, eh? But....

....as a n00bie like myself, I wasted hours and hours of time and a few DVD discs just to see how the result would be. In my "GL2/Mac Beginner's" experience, exporting the movie to the camera from iMovie is the exact result as burning to DVD, but without the hours and hours of rendering time and burning. My footage was one hour long and it took my G4 Powerbook (1.2 gHz) over 4 hours to burn a DVD.

So...for you n00bs like me

1. Extract audio from movie clip.

2. Test the audio sync by exporting the movie directly to your DV cam.

3. Hopefully it solves yer audio sync problem. Burn yer DVD. :D

[Roman Dirge]

Alright, I've been working on a short film on and off for over two years now. When I started it, all I had was iMovie, so I did all my editing in it. Time went on and I moved to Final Cut for my other endeavors, but since I had so much of the original film in iMovie, I just thought "Screw it. Might as well just finish it in this cute little iMovie." A few days ago, something horrible happened. My iMovie file became unreadable. Just out of the blue.

I didn't panic. I had, after all, backed up my files in the past. Nope. Somehow, the only back up I had left was a version a year old. I guess I had accidentally deleted the newer one, thinking it was the older one at one point.

I did some research and all I could find was the suggestion of taking the media from the folder and dropping it into a new iMovie file. I did that and I got 480 clips, many of which were raw footage before I had done any effects. All the editing was gone and it is almost impossible to make sense of the 480 clips.

I also read that I could possibly use the .movie file from the folder and salvage it with that. I opened the folder and to my surprise, it was gone. I did a search on my computer and it had vanished. All the media is there, but the .movie file is M.I.A.

Before all this fun filled stuff happened, I had made a full size Quicktime of the footage. I opened a new imovie file and imported it. It looks....ok I think. To me, it looks like it has gone down a notch in quality, but it could just be cause I am filled with contempt. Either way, I'm partially screwed with it because I had used cross dissolves and what not, so I can't go in to re-edit those since obviously they are now rendered.

I'm trying to think good thoughts, but has anyone heard or dealt with this before? Any suggestions to my salvation or do I just go drink heavily?

[Rob Lohman]

I'm sorry to hear of your loss. But I have a suggestion to make
for future projects (or when you continue with this one or find
some way to recover it, I hope some Mac guru's here can help
you out) that you should really do with EVERY project in EVERY
NLE (if it doesn't do this automatically):

Use "SAVE AS" instead of normal "SAVE" when you begin a new
day of work on the project (or at least for every large block of time).

I use a structure like the following for saving project files:

"projectname yearmonthday"

So I might use: "ladyx 20040927" for today.

Yes this will create a lot of files (but you can always move old
files to a backup) but gives you two things:

1. an easy way to look at an old edit you did if you seem to remember it had a good flow for example

2. an instant backup that isn't too old (at most a couple of days)

Ofcourse you can (and should) combine this with a backup of
the project files to another computer or media like a CD-R.

Unforunately this won't help you now, but it might save you from
problems in the future.

Good luck for now!

[Jeff Donald]

I don't use iMovie. However, my students have related similar experiences to me. It can almost always be attributed to lengthy, complex projects. iMovie is meant to be a simple home video editor, not a professional NLE. The number of clips, effects etc. pushed iMovie to it's limit. I would post this to Apple's iMovie support forum.

[Glenn Chan]

What Jeff said...! I have seen iMovie disappear the original media. Obviously not fun. I feel sorry for you Roman...

2- There are programs that may be able to undelete your imovie project file, although I can't say whether it will be successful for you.

Disk Warrior seems to do this:
http://www.alsoft.com/DiskWarrior/

3- Take a break and do something else for a while. Then when you come back storyboard your edit (or do a master layout or whatever) and cut your movie again. You might be able to redo things better, and taking a break will let you look at your original edit more objectively.

[Roman Dirge]

Thanks guys. I think this is just one of those things I have to chalk up as a learning experience, painful though it surely is. This was a very complex project involving numerous sets, models, puppets, sweat, now tears. I was making, writing, shooting, lighting, etc, everything by myself so I guess it was kind of destined for trouble.
I have bunches of screenshots of it up here if anyone feels so inclined:

www.Livejournal.com/users/taxidermied

I'm going to keep positive and just be in the frame of mind that I have learned so much about my camera and movie making since I started this a couple of years ago, and now when I go to reshoot some of the missing footage, it can only be better.

[Luc Burson]

Long story short:

I'm new to video editing but not new to video formats.

My main question is: When importing DV via 1394 into iMovie, does it compress the video on the input? I notice significant picture degradation when viewing from iMovie (version 4) and the Q-time player and am assuming that iMovie imports the video as-is uncompressed but displays it in compressed form for for CPU conservation. Is this correct or is iMovie actually compressing the incoming video signal? And if it is compressing the incoming signal is there a way to capture video from my MiniDV cam into my PowerBook for use in iMovie without compromising any signal quality.
AND if none of this is true, then why does the picture look so dirty but when played on a Pro DV Deck it looks great? (short answere may be: Pro Deck = pro quality but c'mon, iMovie then must compress the heck out of a great signal to look that different.)

Thanks All
Luc

[Jeff Donald]

DV by the very definition of the format is compressed 5:1. iMovie does not add any additional compression. The screen images in iMove are adapted for the processor and memory in the computer. When the edited movie is output to DV it will be at full resolution.

[Luc Burson]

When we say 'compression' we mean datarate compression by codec. One could say from another standard size that DV is compressed by frame size to 720x480 (correct me please). If it's a codec compression in the camera itself then where's the info for it? Can it be optimized? Or is it a set standard that isn't editable? ---Anyways thanks for the info! I just wanted to check on that before I start capturing video and later realize that what I am seeing is what I will get in the end. It's rather logical that a (free) movie editing software would adjust the picture quality for the respective processor real estate. I'll proceed with my 'little' video in faith that in the end it will look better. (cross my fingers) You'll probably see me in this forum over the next months speaking for us newbies.......it's a leap coming from the audio-world over to the video universe.

BTW - Nice Pics!

___Luc

[Jeff Donald]

Thanks. The DV standard can not be optimized or altered if it is to be played back on a DV format camera or deck. Final Cut Pro and some other professional editing software are resolution independent and can render to a different format etc. iMovie is a great way to learn a little editing and when you ready you can move up to FCE or FCP.

[Mark Sloan]

If you are using iMovie to do fairly long movies with lots of cuts and transitions I'd suggest backing up fairly often. With iMovie its as easy as copying the folder, but it means your project will take up twice as much room. I've had enough problems that I'd suggest a back up for every day.

[Michael Pace]

OK lads and lassies, i DID do a search (brief, ja) and did'nt get the answer: i'm in PC world and need to burn off some small video files on CD to a compadre with some kind of Apple and he's using iMovie. I can render to .mov-- will he be able to read a PC-burned disc with .mov files on his machine?? Or is the burn standard of PC incompat w/ Apple?

Love,

MRP

[Joshua Starnes]

Yes, he will be able to read PC burned .mov files. QuickTime is an Apple standard so it should be able to read it no matter what it originated from. And vice versa if your PC has a QuickTime Player.