[MacDV] Re: iMovie / iDVD pixelation & noise

[Jill Arenson]

Interesting.

I just prepared a still image video presentation for a Sales Conference 
at my company.  I have a brand new G5 at home, and a Dell Laptop with 
Premiere on it at work.  I couldn't decide whether I wanted to do the 
project during my off hours at home on my beautiful G5, or at work on 
my annoying Dell.  Finally, the need to spend hours and hours and on 
the project forced me to do it at work.  I used both stills and videos 
from various sources, added music and all kinds of special effects to 
give the video 'jazz'.  I exported first as a Quicktime DV movie and 
the result was terrible.  Pixelization similar to what you describe 
below.  Then I exported as an mpg using the divx codec making sure I 
exported to a DV size (720 x 480, I believe it was), frame rate for 
NTSC 29.97 and I also de-interlaced because many of the forums I'm on 
point to interlacing as a cause of problems.

The result played beautifully on my Dell Laptop.   I burned a DVD using 
DVDit.   Burned with no problems.  I tested it on a large screen Sony 
XBR TV because I know if any pixelization or anything funky  is going 
to show up, it will show up there.  That TV is a digital ready monster 
that brings out the flaws in even the best professionally made DVD, and 
I know my project is going to be shown on a projector and blown up 50 
fold in size.  The result was fine.  Not as crystal clear as it looked 
on the computer monitor, but damn good.  The only images that showed 
any 'noise' were those images that I knew were not of the best quality 
anyway, and I expected they wouldn't look the best.  There was 
occasionally a hint of pixelization between transitions, but barely 
enough to complain about and probably wouldn't be noticeable to someone 
who wasn't looking for it.

Between the posts of problems with iDVD4 and now this post, it seems my 
beautiful G5 would have probably given me nothing but headaches if I 
had tried to do the project on it.

Believe me when I tell you, working in Premiere on my Dell is no easy 
thing.  Playback in the project is never good; rendering in order to 
see transitions takes forever (I had transitions, motion, blue screen - 
all kinds of things on in over 200 images).
Rendering the final output took 1 hour with divx (and the file size was 
an acceptable 68mgs as opposed to the 1.5G that produced using 
Quicktime).  Burning the DVD (~6 minute movie) took 10 minutes.

So, is it safe to conclude I should:

Stay away from iMovie for still image projects.  I have FCP, but would 
have probably used iMovie because of its links to iPhoto and iDVD.
Keep my fingers crossed when using iDVD4 as it may or may not be able 
to burn a DVD (and whether it will or won't seems to depend upon the 
Gods)

Now I'm not a fan of Windows and Premiere because of the horrible 
trouble I've had doing projects.  I've had Premiere loaded on many 
different computers, each one faster and faster with more power, more 
RAM etc.    But never did Premiere work as smoothly and beautifully as 
iMovie and FCP work on my G5.  This being said, what good is it if I'm 
not going to be able to get acceptable output?



Dj






>>
>
> one, of many problems, is due to the fact that DVD is compressed and 
> you
> are watching it from a projector...
>
> If you try to watch a DVD on a large screen, pixelization occurs = not 
> a
> good idea...
>
> If you want to view your "movie" using a projector, try to play it from
> tape, first choice would be DV CAM, then miniDV, then D8, then VHS 
> tape...
>
> try it for yourself...
>
> and let me know if you see a difference...
>
>