It's strange, I've made a slideshow that came out good quality with iMovie before. For some reason now it's crap quality, possibly the iMovie update I got a couple of weeks ago? I could create the slideshow with Final Cut, but that just seems like overkill. I don't need to manually tweak my photos and create motion keyframes for Ken Burns Effect, iMovie has that built in. iMovie turned my 3.2MP digicam pics into webcam quality video. What's up with that???
After scouring the web on the way to create the best quality slideshow with iMovie (or Mac for that matter) I found a site that mentioned creating a slideshow in iPhoto, having all the settings, then sending the slideshow to iDVD, and taking the file it created. Once you have that mov file you can import it into iMovie and create chapter markers or whatever you wanted. My slideshow was 8 minutes long, so I thought that I would create the slideshow with video only, then import it into iMovie and add the soundtrack there.
For some strange reason my slideshow wouldn't import into iMovie!!! RAWR it got some error that said "The file could not be imported: Unknown Error" No explanation given. OK, I'm a solution type of guy.. Let's try Final Cut. I'm importing a mov file just like any other video file I'd use in a project. My Mac created the video file, so Final Cut should be able to use it as a resource. Final Cut allowed me to import it no problem, but the entire video file needed to be rendered. Odd, I thought. It's already a video, and my Mac can play it fine. Maybe it's because it has to render it into DV format. I let it render, which takes about half an hour. Might as well make some salad to eat... I come back, preview it at 100% size and it's smaller and blurrier than the mov file. Weird. Maybe it's just the playback. I export it full quality to my hard drive and compare it with the original. Yep. Quality has worsened. Time for a different approach. I can't mess with the video or I'll get bad quality. Time to turn towards the audio...
I know, iPhoto only supports one song for your soundtrack setting, SO what I'll do is use GarageBand and mix multiple songs into one single file, and use that in iPhoto as a single song. It's the first time I've touched GarageBand, and I see an option to add a score to a video. Great! Sounds like exactly what I want to do. I get my songs, arrange them, cut here, trim there, oh, I want this chorus, maybe a fade here. *whew* ok, I'm all set. Let's add a title at the end. I'll use iMovie to create and export a title, then add it onto the end of the slideshow. Great, GarageBand will only let me replace the file. I guess it's a one video file type of project. OK, maybe an alternative will be to create a title as an image, add it to my slideshow like a regular picture, I can adjust the dissolves and the time it's shown. I'll try that later though, first let's see what it looks like. Export movie. Sounds like exactly what I'm trying to do. Hit export. Wait 10 or 15 minutes. Time to see how well it came out. WHAAAAT?!?!? My slideshow has gone from 720x540 resolution down to 240x180, effectively destroying it. *sigh*
Let's rethink this. iPhoto or iDVD created slideshows seem to give the best quality. Why iMovie comes out so blurry I don't know. I've already created a slideshow ready for music in iPhoto. Maybe there's another way around this. A quick search for "iPhoto Slideshow" leads me to Apple's iPhoto page, and I see there's an export option. Why didn't I look there first, and why did that website I found suggest for you to do a work around export via "Share -> Send to iDVD" option? I have no clue. I decide to take my chances and export via the file menu (File -> Export...) using their large size (640x480) setting. Takes another 15 minutes or so to export. Cross my fingers and roll the dice. Opened up iMovie and imported the video successfully! Nice.
I wonder if the problem was the resolution. The aspect ratio was still 1.333, but maybe iMovie just doesn't like other resolutions *shrug*. Currently working in iMovie. I'm going to have to recreate the soundtrack for the slideshow... let's hope it works >_<
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