Do you have a Panasonic 700-series camera? Check out my guide to using them on the Mac.
This used to be a tutorial on how to export 720p video from iMovie ’09 for sites like YouTube or Vimeo. Apple have now added a 720p export option to iMovie ’09 version 8.0.1, so if this is all you want, you can stop here. Run Software Update for the latest version of iMovie.
But if you have an HD camera that shoots in 1080i, and you want higher quality video output, follow this guide.
Please note that I don’t have the time to answer every comment I get on this post, and I’ve had a lot. Please scan through the other comments to see if someone else has asked your question, and re-read my guide carefully. Especially please do not email me iMovie questions! Thanks.
Since this guide was written, Apple have released Snow Leopard and QuickTime X. This guide still applies, but you will have to use QuickTime 7 (which isn’t installed by default), instead of QuickTime X. QuickTime X is still too limited to be useful.
Also see the FAQ.
Note: This guide is for users of iMovie ’09 and 1080i video cameras. If you have an older version of iMovie (including iMovie ’08), this guide won’t work for you. If you have an HD camera that doesn’t shoot in 1080i (such as one of the “Flip” cameras, or most digital still cameras that also shoot HD video), this guide won’t work for you.
By default, Apple’s iMovie ’09 software will only export video at up to 720p, and at 25fps. (This tutorial will use PAL framerates, but if you live in America or another NTSC country, it will still work for you. Just read 30 instead of 25, and 60 instead of 50.) 1080i video cameras, however, shoot 50 frames a second. It is possible to exploit this interlaced format and end up with 1080p video, optionally at the full 50 frames a second. (Note that you need a very fast Mac to play 1080p50 video. You should probably choose either 1080p25 or 720p50. Alternatively, the Sony Playstation 3 makes an excellent 1080p50 video player.)
Here’s how you can get the most out of your 1080i video camera.
Things you will need:
- A video camera that shoots in 1080i, and is compatible with iMovie.
- iMovie ’09. This is bundled with iLife ’09, and comes with every new Mac.
- JES Deinterlacer. This is a free download, but make sure you get the Universal Binary version.
- QuickTime Pro. This is a $30 download from Apple.
(If you don’t want to buy QuickTime Pro and have access to a different MP4 encoder, you can use that, but you’ll have to figure out what to do in step 5 for yourself.)
How to do it:
1. Import your video at “Full” size.
Run iMovie, connect your camera, and wait for the import window to appear. Make sure you choose the “Full – 1920×1080″ option.
Note! You must leave “Analyze for stabilization after import” turned off. Unfortunately, stabilising your video completely destroys the interlacing and so, combined with the “Full” size import, makes exporting HD video completely impossible. Yes, this is stupid. Blame Apple, not me.
2. Edit your movie.
Create a new project and put whatever you want in it. Note that you must not stabilise your video, see above.
3. “Export using QuickTime”.
We’re going to export your video to the “Apple Intermediate Codec”, at the full 1920×1080 size. We need to do this to preserve the interlacing on your video.
a) Choose “Export using QuickTime” in the Share menu.
b) Select “Movie to QuickTime Movie”, and click “Options”.
c) Click “Settings” under Video and set the options to match these:
d) Click “Size” under Video and set the options to match these:
(Note that the sizes marked NTSC/PAL/HD at the start of the name have non-square pixels, so avoid these.)
e) Click “Settings” under Sound and set the options to match these:
f) Turn off “Prepare for internet streaming”. When you’re done, the Movie Settings window should look like this:
g) Click OK, and then click Save. Wait for your video to export.
4. Deinterlace the video with JES Deinterlacer.
a) Run JES Deinterlacer. Click “Choose” and select the video you just exported from iMovie.
b) On the Input tab, set “Block match threshold”. For high quality video with little noise, choose 300. For noisy/fuzzy video (perhaps shot in the dark), choose 600 or higher. For only slightly noisy video pick a figure somewhere between.
c) On the Project tab, make sure “Deinterlace” is set. For 25fps output, choose “Use top field”. For 50fps output, choose “Both fields”. (Please note the disclaimer about playback at the top of this tutorial.) You can optionally turn on the “Local” option. This slightly increases quality, but takes longer to process.
d) Ensure the Output tab looks as below (change the output filename by clicking “Put”, if you wish), and click OK. Wait while your video is deinterlaced.
5. Compress and scale with QuickTime Pro.
Load the video you created with JES Deinterlacer into QuickTime. Select “Export” from the File menu. Choose “Movie to MPEG-4″ and click Options.
a) Change the options on the video tab to match this:
Important: If you want 1080p output instead of 720, change the resolution to “1920 x 1080 HD” and increase the bitrate to 16200.
These two bitrates are suggestions, you can tweak them up or down if you wish.
b) Click Video Options and change the options to match this:
c) Change the options on the audio tab to match this:
d) On the Streaming tab, turn off “Enable streaming”.
Click OK, choose a filename, then click Save.
6. You’re done!
You can delete the two intermediate videos you exported from iMovie and JES Deinterlacer.
Hello,
Thanks for the tutorial. The resulting Quicktime Movie was great; however, when I dropped it into Roxio Toast 10, the slideshow (created in iMovie) looked terrible. Toast automatically compresses the file. Doens’t seem like I can burn an uncompressed DVD. My full movie (2.3GB) can fit on a DVD, but Toast compresses to 336kb. What can I do, as I am losing quality. It looks terrible on TV.
Thanks,
Thanks for the great tutorial. I mostly shoot HD with a Canon T2i/550D in 720p/60fps. Do you know if this means my vids are interlaced or progressive video and require these steps? if so, i will use them, just curious. Thanks!
another dumb question: on average, how many MB per minute would a finished 1280×720 video be? mine are about 30MB per minute of video, but i think that is too large. thoughts? Thanks!
I followed your steps and when I burned the mp4 to disk and played back on my ps3 the file would play and pause over and over, almost like a broken record. Any reason why this could be happening? Also, I noticed that the gamma settings on your post change from 2.22 when importing to JES and then switch to 2.20 on the output. I left mine at default 2.00. Could that be the reason?
I have a Sony CX150 HD camera and a Macbook Pro and using iMovie 9. I was disappointed in the quality from iMovie export until I tried your instructions using the JES Interlacer. The quality of the movie is now HD when burned to DVD using Toast Titanium 10. The bonus is the export of 15 minutes of video from iMovie was 15 Gb, when run through JES it went to half or about 7.5Gb then when burned to DVD from Toast it became 1Gb. This means I can fit about 1 Hour of high quality HD video burned to a standard DVD disc. Very happy with your tutorial. Many thanks!
Hi,
could you please advice wot imac application you have used to burn the DVD
Many Thanks,
Sam
You stated that this guide doesn’t work for iMovie 08, but it seems to work fine foe me. Am I missing something? Thanks for your efforts.
…David
No, it’s a Sony HDR-TG3. As far as I know, the 5D shoots in progressive, not interlaced, so you don’t need this guide.
Yes, otherwise it will be reduced in size to 540p.
It will work fine.
Nothing, except that you have to deinterlace the clip files one by one. I often have hundreds.
Yes, most blu-ray players have standard-definition output – but I can’t see why you would ever want to do this. Just make a normal DVD.
I don’t know if you’re lost, but I certainly am.
I’ve never used Compressor, Final Cut, or anything like it. Sorry.
As far as I know, 60i doesn’t actually exist – it’s a silly way of describing 30i. So “60i” should work fine. 30p and 24p may also work fine, but you don’t need do to any of my tricks, just a standard export will work fine.
1. No. Your camera doesn’t shoot interlaced video.
2. “Export using QuickTime” using the settings from Step 5. If you’re happy with 720p, you can use the regular export.
3. That will work fine too.
The filesize is much less than the 40gb/hour specified by iMovie – this is only for the mostly-uncompressed version that iMovie uses for editing. You can control the resulting file size by adjusting the export bitrate.
The only way to figure out what your old PC will be able to play will be to try it – if your PC is very old you may find that neither work and you’ll have to resort to 720p30. (Though you’ll find this still looks pretty good.)
Yes, JES converts your video to progressive, but it doesn’t fix noise.
nclc is a new option, you can leave it on “None”.
Follow these instructions, making sure to choose the 1080p30 options where instructed and you’ll end up with suitable video for burning.
You’re probably seeing interlacing artefacts, so yes, this guide should help. The TG3 doesn’t actually have a 720 recording mode, only 1080i.
The “current size” is misleading. Ignore it. 1080p exports work correctly.
I haven’t tried it, it didn’t exist when I wrote this guide. – give it a go!
You can burn HD videos with Toast, but if you just want to watch it on a PS3, by far the easiest way is just to copy the mp4 onto a USB drive and plug it into your PS3.
The “current size” is misleading. Ignore it. 1080p exports work correctly.
Probably Toast.
1080p60 looks better simply because it has twice the number of frames per second – 60 instead of 30. To learn more about interlacing, read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interlace
I generally allocate 128kb per pixel, so (1920×1080)/128 = 16200. But this is only a suggestion, feel free to experiment.
Block match threshold is an option in the algorithm that determines when to deinterlace a part of the picture, and when not to, based on how much the picture is moving.
It doesn’t actually work.
You can re-import the deinterlaced AIC clips if you want to use stabilization. That works fine.
1. The quality will not be as good as a native 1080p camera since you’re interpolating the contents of every other line. And yes, you can view 1080p footage on a normal TV, it’s not a problem.
2. You can’t put HD video on a DVD, unless you’re going to watch it on a PC or Mac. For a normal TV you’ll need a blu-ray burner and player, and it won’t play in normal DVD players.
3. You can delete the originals.
Since your camera doesn’t shoot in interlaced, you don’t need to follow my guide.
I’m pretty sure iMovie can’t import 60fps video. You’ll probably need to use Final Cut.
DVD players cannot play HD video. It’s not possible.
As far as I’m aware, iMovie doesn’t support 1080i60 video – it downsamples it back to 30fps which rather ruins it.
30p should work just fine – but you don’t need to follow my guide as the video will not be interlaced. Just edit and export as normal.
AppleTV has some odd limitations. Your best bet is to encode the final mp4 using Handbrake instead of QuickTime, and use the Apple TV preset. Handbrake is free – just Google for it.
I followed the instructions but I get the following error message. any thoughts?
NIB Error 10960
Sorry, I don’t know!
Thanks for the excellent blog David
Any suggestions on what to do with a project that contains footage from a AVCHD 1080p camcorder and 1080i from a mini-DV camcorder? Is it best to treat them separately and de-interlace the 1081i footage first?
Your best bet is to deinterlace the 1080i footage and then re-import it so that everything is 1080p.
will this JES thing fix Pixlation problems. with imovie ?
You’ll have to be more specific, I’m afraid. I don’t know what problems you’re referring to.
1) I think it is an interlaced video so your guide will be very useful, isn’t it?
Yes.
2) After rendering, I’d like to play the movie to a SP3. Could you help me about final settings in QT, in order to lose as less as possible in quality?
A PS3 will happily play 1080p50 video – just follow the guide.
3) At last, I’ve noticed comparing PC Sony vegas with imovie 09 that imovie is worse (in HD) because it displays noticeable bands in shadows. Vegas works better because the shadows are degrading and there aren’t bands.
I haven’t seen this problem myself.
Is there any setting that you can suggest to me in order to eliminate this bands?
I tried this with WDTV. My video would not play. Do you know the settings to export HD content to play on a WDTV, which is a great little device. Thanks!
Sorry, I’ve never used one.
Any suggestion? Vegas works better than imovie but render has a lot of bugs and program stops frequently – as using four angles titles in imovie 09….)
Sorry but I don’t know anything about Vegas, so I can’t really help out with any comparison.
Are your export suggestions here for youtube?
Exporting 720p will work fine for YouTube, but you don’t really need to do it my way. iMovie’s own YouTube export function works fine.
Still photos won’t need deinterlacing. You’re best off sticking with iMovie’s own 720p export function.
Let’s say I want to make an HD version and a standard DVD version. Can the two formats exists on the same DVD where the user can pick which one they want to play?
DVDs cannot store HD video in any format. You need a blu-ray writer.
Hi David,
so if I get a blueray writer can a blue ray player connect to an older regular tv and be watched ( not worried about HD at that point) what I do is video football games for the coach and when team viewing they do not have the best of equipment even though my stuff is not to bad.
I’ve found WD TV player to be easy to use, and only use it for standard DVD quality video. I have a huge library of dvds that are standard rips from laserdisks. I converted them to a format for MP4 or M4v, by changing the extension to M4v the MP4 rips will often work in WD TV. The problem I’ve found and I’ve been using handbrake for that process is some videos play fine on the mac for a mac kiosk but my mom has better luck using the controller and WD TV player. Unfortunately the movies don’t all play as well on the WD player as they do without problems on the mac. I think it’s because there’s a real bottleneck in how high a frame rate or how high a quality of video you can create. I’m using pretty conservative settings and this is for standard dvd not Blue Ray or HD quality rips. And the WD player doesn’t handle all of my standard quality rips. I get some stuttering that is strange and looks like interlaced odd field errors or something, giving a stuttering look that is strange and almost looks to be related to field errors in the render. It happens for 20 to 30% of my ripped videos for the WD kiosk setup. I’m not sure why this happens, but I think it’s a hardware bottleneck with the WD player. That is likely what you are running into with HD content. The WD player is just to cheap to be able to handle the high frame rates for some renders that work perfectly well on the Mac.