[X4U] iMovie problems

[Dennis R. Cohen]

On 6/1/06 at 1:00 PM, Richard Gilmore <rgilmor at uwo.ca> transmitted the
following electronic message:

>
>I think you can also create a slide show from stills directly in iDVD.
>That might be another approach.
>
>Do you need to have high resolution pics?
>
>
>On 1/6/06 10:31 AM, "Nick Scalise" <nickscalise at cox.net> wrote:
>
>> ---- Gerry Van Tol <vantol at mac.com> wrote:
>>> I recently bought a 20" iMac with 1GB RAM. I like to make small
>>> movies with still photo's, kind of like slide shows but a bit more
>>> advanced. My previous PC (Windows Movie maker) couldn't handle the
>>> size of my CANON EOS pictures. I thought my new Apple hardware
>>> could but to my consternation also iMovie decides to be very
>>> unstable. When my slideshow reaches 4GB, the program decides to
>>> stop and abandon spontaneously.  Cutting the slide show in smaller
>>> pieces brings another problem by combining them again into one
>>> movie via iDVD. Is there anybody out there who can give me some
>>> ideas how to solve this problem?
>> 
>> What is the size of the photos you are using?
>> 
>> How many pictures are in the slideshow?
>> 
>> What version of iMovie are you using?
>> 
>> Have you tried creating a slideshow with iPhoto and exporting that
>> to iDVD?
>> 
>> Are you saving the iMovie project to you internal hard drive, or to
>> an external drive?
>>

A few key points -- you aren't EVER going to have "high-res" photos in a
DVD movie. A DVD is going to scale the image down to 640x480 (720x480
rectangular pixels) and, if it is to be played on an NTSC player, the
color model is going to be changed (and NTSC colors are nowhere near as
sharp or vibrant as what you have in a decent digital photo).

The DVD specification for a slideshow limits you to 99 photos per
slideshowm -- and iDVD, DVD Studio Pro, and Toast all enforce that
standards-based limitation. You can work around this by using iMovie to
create a movie where you've imported the images and given them specific
durations (it's no longer, technically, a slideshow). Another possible
option is to create the slideshow using iPhoto, export it to QuickTime,
and then bring that movie into iMovie or iDVD (personally, I often creae
slideshows with iPhoto, export them to QuickTime, encode them for DVD
Studio Pro with ffmpegX and then create a DVD using DVDSP and a
collection of such slideshows -- my girlfriend is constantly giving me
batches of photos of the grandkids and saying "Make me a slideshow with
'xxx' as the background music").

I'm not sure what the "4GB problem" might be, as I can create movies
larger than 4GB with iMovie06, even ones with lots of "Ken Burns"
segments.

-- 
Dennis R. Cohen