more imovie questions from somone new to this whole thing

[mikesmithfranklin]

This is probably a simple solution, but I am a video dummy. I shot some HD footage, imported into imovie 08. When the window opened asking me if I wanted the import "large" which was 920 x 400 or something like that or "Larger" 1080 x 700 (these numbers aren't exact) I chose the larger of the two, after all I want to get the best capture quality. I edited in imovie exported in h.264 QT widescreen automatic keyframes, the brought into new idvd project and burned to DVD. The video quality and transitions look great on the screen, but on a TV the video quality was not so great and the pixelation especially at transitions was really bad. The qt file is 80M for 4 minutes of footage...am I missing something? Is the computer choking on the file size? (its an imac 2.8 with the standard ram setup (2 gigs, I think). Should I be manually adjusting the keyframes. The movie is a collection of clips of real estate. There's a fair amount of zooming in and panning up and down. Ultimately what I'm after is a high quality DVD and something that will look spectacular in a flash player online...thanks for the advice

[Eugenia Loli-Queru]

First of all, please don't cross post.

Secondly, you should not be exporting to h.264 for use with iDVD. You should be using iMovie '06 (and not the new one, which sucks), and then "send the movie" to iDVD directly, without exporting first. This way, you don't lose any quality.

[mikesmithfranklin]

What is it about imovie that makes the quality of the video bad ?

[Eugenia Loli-Queru]

Well, you exported in h.264, instead of actually "sending" the project directly to iDVD. More over, I have seen the bad quality during transitions myself. It's just bad algorithms, nothing you can do yourself.