Fluency of Video in iMovie

G

gerard karelse

Registered
I finished an iMovie project. For one of the clips I used slow motion (with the effects panel). On the DVD I made from the iMovie project I noticed that the movements in this clip are not fluent (with shocks). How to improve this, I forgot something?

youre advice will be appreciated.

Gerard (NL)
 
Is it not simply the effect you get by stretching it too much? If your original data is 25 frames per second and you stretch it too much, you end up with merely 4 or 5 frames per second, which of course is very noticeable - and there's not much, technologically, iMovie can do about it...
 
Thanks a lot for your input. May be you are right, but I didn't exagerate with slowing down, another clip was fine. This fluency problem is all over my project now! I cannot even stop my playhead and it takes ages before the video catches up with the sound when I want to play a clip(s) I discovered(?)that my project is too big (55 GB) for iMovie to handle (other smaller projects are doing fine, no matter where they are: on my internal HD or external HD.)
Is there a solution apart from buying a G5 iMac (my Powerbook G4 is not even 1 year old)?

Please inform me about my 'philosophy/diagnosis', thanks a lot.

Gerard (NL)
 
Hm. Maybe you could add a pause somewhere (fade to black, fade in) and split the project into two projects?
 
Fryke, thanks for your "thinking", I will consider splitting up the project, but it is a lot of work. This weekend I will connect my ext.HD to the new iMac G5 from my brother to see how it works and if that is giving the same problems I will copy the project to his internal drive. After running those tests I can rule out hardware limitations can I?

Gerard.
 
Fryke, I want to let you know the outcome of my testing. The same large iMovie project on exactly the same ext HD (USB) hooked up with the new iMac G5 from my brother played flawless!!! I guess my problem is solved for my PB G4 if I increase memory from 512 MB to 1,5Gb (the quantity my brother is using)?????
 
Or you may wanna look at these preferences

iMovies.jpg
 
Thanks a lot I didn't consider this preferences possibility anymore because sofar my projects were running fine, apparently not if they grow bigger. I changed it and it is playing almost flawless now. Also I will buy extra memory this week. Should I go for 1Gb ( 233 dollar included installation and testing)or 512 Mb (91 dollar)??

Gerard
 
This improved the performance considerably, thanks a lot. I didn't bother with those preferences because it went fine until my project was growing (to more then 40 Gb) On the new iMac G5 (memory 2 Gb) from my brother with the same external HD it played the same project flawless. Does it makes sense for me to upgrade my memory from 512 Mb to 1 or 1,5 Gb?
Gerard (NL)
 
gerard karelse said:
Does it makes sense for me to upgrade my memory from 512 Mb to 1 or 1,5 Gb?
Gerard (NL)
Click to expand...

Power-hungry programs like iMovie, Photoshop, and others, will find a way to use whatever RAM you have in your computer. If you can fit it in your budget, i say upgrade to 1,5 Gb.
 
Try the smoothing. If that doesn't give good results, maybe you might try editing the time/playback on this clip in QuickTime, then plug it back into your iMovie project? Can you play your iMovie file to a TV from your computer (via a DA converter or using your camcorder as a DA converter? If it plays fine there, the problem may be in iDVD. Still, I do lots of this kind of stuff in Final Cut (which has its own frame blending option) and DVDs with iDVD from those files play fine. Sorry if I raised nothing but questions for you!
 
When iMovie renders a slow-motion scene it just duplicates each frame so the movement gets jerky. You get smoother motion with 3rd party utilities like JES Deinterlacer or Slow Motion Smoother.

vacmac
 
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