[MacDV] Re: Two beginner questions

[sb]

You don't say what version of iMovie you are using, or what version of OSX?
I assume since you are using H.264, you have QT7, so you must be using
either 10.3.9 or Tiger.

DV video is 720x480. After importing into iMovie, export out using the
Share, then Expert settings, then make sure all the QT settings are for best
quality, choosing the H.264 codec, choosing 320x280 frame size, using AAC
for audio. You should be able to double that on playback and have it look
very good.

As for breaking up the video into clips using the record start/stop
information recorded onto the tape, that's a setting in the iMovie prefs.

If you are using an older version, iMovie could only import 2GB files at a
time, so it virtually cut them into 9:12 clips, which are 2GB. That doesn't
happen in iMovie 5, unless your hard drive is formatted as HSF, instead of
HSF+

Regards,

 sb


On 8/5/05 10:31 AM, "David Hillman" <hillman at planet-torque.com> wrote:

> 
>    I've been making small ( few minutes ) movies for on-line use from my
> Camcorder for a couple years, but I have a couple questions that should be
> easy, I think.
> 
>    The video I've done before is all 320x240 .wmv format, because I had a
> PC, and could only use the USB connection on my Sony camera.  Now that I
> have iMovie and Firewire, I'd like to switch to 640x480.  I took a 6
> minute segment and encoded it as MPEG-4 with H.264 and it wound up 18 MB.
> That's fine, but the quality wasn't quite what I hoped for.  I don't need
> DVD-quality, but this, while watchable, wasn't really sufficient.  What I
> can use to get better image quality without exploding the file size
> beyond, say, 4 meg/minute at 640x480?
> 
>    Also, while capturing video from my Camcorder, iMovie was randomly
> breaking the video into chunks.  IOW, my 6 minutes of video was in 9
> "clips" varying in length from 20 to 90 seconds.  Now, this might just
> have been my old, slightly beat-up camera acting strange, but can this be
> stopped?  Is iMovie seeing a pause in data from the camera and starting a
> new clip?
> 
>    Thanks.
> 
> --
>  David Hillman