Letterboxing in iMovie (Canon XH A1)
 

i know the A1 is not compatible with imovie unless u convert it to 60i. So i filmed in 60i and tried importing it. It imports it but It shows a blue screen and says playback STD non viewable or something but when Its done importing it says LETTERBOXING. THIS MAY TAKE A WHILE. WHY IS THAT? I do not want to letterbox my footage. I tried going on the cameras signal options and it says the letterbox is off. Why is it letterboxing and how do i stop that! It makes the importing take soooo much longer like REALLY REALLY LONG just cuz it says LETTERBOXING. THIS MAY TAKE A WHILE. PLEASE HELP!

Moved from Canon XH to NLE Mac.

you have to check your preferences in iMovie, not the camera. Go into preferences > import > uncheck the box that says "automatic pillarboxing and letterboxing"

Eric
your awesome. thank you!

You sure are working hard at getting this fotage... hope you're gonna share it :)

Imported 16:9 DV to iMovie, Not Working Right
 

Hi to all who are reading. I need some help from someone who has trodden this road already. I set the XH A1 to 16:9 DV recording, and when I was done with my shoot, I downloaded the content to iMovie (I couldn't yet figure how to send it to Final Cut Express) and it does not set it in letterbox, but rathers makes all the faces very long. I thought in the past that the program automatically adjusted, but it has not done it yet, and I can't find a setting on iMovie to get it to actually do it.

Anyone have suggestions???

Thanks!

Hi Dean.

Seems your footage needs to be converted in anamorphic 16:9.
I know how to do it in FCP. I am not a iMove user.

To import your footage via FCP, just go to the "easy setup" (under Final Cut Pro), and then tick the "show all" box. Look for DV-NTSC (or PAL) - Anamorphic.

Then go to "Log and Capture" and try to capture your footage.

Try these steps and tell me if it works.

imovie as field monitor,capture
 

I like the idea of using my macbook as a monitor and encoder, but the problem is that the picture quality is really terrible. I did a side-by-side with an ntsc monitor and I don't think I could ever trust the laptop for anything besides focus.

Does anyone ever use imovie capture/import for FCP?

Hi Seth and welcome to the forums.

There are two isssues presented here:

1.) Using iMovie and your laptop as a field monitor works for some situations, but not in cases where you need even a moderatly critical eye. It is highly doubtful that you are going to get an accurate read on focus, color balance and exposure without first doing alot of set-up and calibration work first, and even then, you also will need to disable the MacBooks ambient light sensor system that lightens or darkens your screen depending upon your environment as this will mess with any calibration you might have already done. This being the case, your monitor screen is not likely to provide you a true representation of what your camera is 'seeing'. Also, by default, iMovie is generally set in its preferences to NOT provide the highest quality display of your image - you can change this setting in iMovie preferences to suit the limitions of your graphics card, but if it is not set to high quality, then using the monitor to focus will not be easy.

2.) Capturing through iMovie for transfer to Final Cut Pro... Well, I know some people who do this because they are not comfortable with the log and capture process of FCP and they are used to the iMovie process, but I think the iMovie-to-FCP method is frustrating hassle...here's why. iMovie and FCP don't use the same codec base and FCP cannot natively read the native contents of your iMovie capture. (This is where Final Cut Express comes in as it uses a nearly identical interface as FCP, but with the codec system of iMovie, which is handy for folks who like to capture in iMovie and edit in Final Cut Express.)

But to use your iMovie content in Final Cut Pro you should avoid the standard full resolution export as a .dv file. Final Cut Pro cannot use this file without first requiring a lengthy (and sometimes crash prone render).
You first need to export (or share) your clips out of iMovie, and choose the 'expert settings' option and selecting the NTSC DVCPRO option, and your audio settings at aiff audio at 48kHz (assuming this is the standard way with which you are setting up your FCP projects.)

Hope this helps.
-Jon

Personal experience says it's best to use imovie in this workflow as nothing more than a field monitor. I've done the whole iMovie import/capture thing and have been really disappointed with the results. Extra conversion just kills the smooth workflow of a nice "capture now" workflow in FCP. Assuming you are quite judicious with your shooting ratio.

imovie - import video from DVD?
 

Guys (/Girls!) -

imovie question - can the current version of imovie import video from a (non-encrypted) DVD and edit that and create a new DVD for it?

reason is that I have a video transfer customer who has a reasonably new mac, but can't decide whether he wants me to transfer his analog tapes to AVI files or a playable DVD (which I would hardware encode real time).

I PC stuff, but nothing about mac.

Life would be simple here for my customer if imovie can reach into the vob files, grab the mpegs, and edit mpeg and then create output that could be (re) authored. Thus, I could just give him some playable DVDs, and if he does decide he wants to dip into editing, he could do that. (otherwise, if I give him avi's and he decides he is not going to edit, then someone, e.g. me, has to encode all that stuff, which I could have done on the first pass much more easily and cost effectively).

any thoughts on this are appreciated.. if this is too OT for this forum, then I apologize (it's not a real FCP post question, for example, but ...).

thanks...!!

you'll need to either extract the movie with something like handbreak or do a movie screen capture with something like snapzpro. try to have a .mov in h264 codec for best results.

google is your friend!

thanks..google is my friend, but wasn't last night!! (searched but no luck)

can imovie edit mpeg2? assume so based on your reply?

thanks again..greatly appreciate all of this.

MPEG Streamclip
 

I use MPEG Streamclip. It's free - just google it. You can import video from the Video TS folder on the DVD and save it as a QuickTime or DV file for iMovie.