Does Imovie Work Better with H264 ?

[smartduck]

Hello y'all experts
I am currently recording clips with a Sony Mini DVD (MPG2) camera and editing the clips in Imovie 09 just to put a short intro and some subtitles. Unfortunately, the export quality of the clip is awful. The original MPG2 is quite good looking, albeit interlaced.

My questions:
1) Is there any alternative to Imovie that would let me edit the clip in the original MPG2 format, and insert the intro, etc, without a conversion? I know MPG2 is not a good format to edit, but maybe there is some solution.

2) Would I benefit at all if I start using a camera that records in H264 ? Or Imovie would convert the clip to AIC and wreck the quality anyways ?

Thanks a lot.

[Herve]

hello

My questions:
1) Is there any alternative to Imovie that would let me edit the clip in the original MPG2 format, and insert the intro, etc, without a conversion?

no you find some editiong abilities in MpegStreamClip (or Toast)
they are very limited (trim, cut, paste) and not very user-friendly nor accurate … but they exist

2) Would I benefit at all if I start using a camera that records in H264 ?

same behavior: mpeg2 or h264 are broadcasting formats
AIC or DV are editing formats
You need to convert every " broadcasting formats" to edit it safely (finally, it's only a temporary -huge- file for your edit)

Or Imovie would convert the clip to AIC and wreck the quality anyways ?

wrong, iMovie '08 or '09 doesn't damage your file if you don't use its presets.
Every iMovie presets produce bad quality with interlaced files , so export to AIC from iMovie: huge resulting size, but you can process it later to a bradcasting format with a real soft (MPegStreamclip, etc)
iMovie does not damage everytime, you just need to mislead it defaut behavior

bye