Warning: iMovie 3.x QuickTime (Full Quality DV) Export Bug!!

[WiseWeasel]

I just noticed yesterday, that when I export my video from iMovie 3.0.3, choose QuickTime in the 'Export' popup menu, and "Full Quality DV" in the Format popup menu, it downsamples my audio to 32 kHz. The workaround seems to be to choose 'Expert setting...' instead of 'Full Quality DV'. Then, in the next screen that pops up, choose 'Movie - self-contained" in the 'Export' popup menu. This preserves the original video and audio streams, and places them in a .mov container. The "Full Quality DV" audio downsampling is a big problem, as DVDs require 48 kHz audio, and so the 32 kHz audio must be upsampled to 48 kHz before encoding to AC3, and this process will lose a bunch of audio data. Hope I can spare you guys the grief I went through for this.

[brett]

surprisingly, the same darn thing happened to me -- 32k! -- and i used to export FQ DVD all the time w/o this happening (ie, 48k). by the time i realized, i had already deleted my source. apple's sw quirks in the last year or two are increasing, imo.

[WiseWeasel]

It's really bad. I guess I should have specified that I'm using Panther, and have been for several months, and it seems to be due to that. So watch out all you Panther users! [Edit: It's not Panther, it's iMovie 3.x] I don't have a 10.2.x install to test this pet theory on, however.

[WiseWeasel]

OK, it seems this isn't a bug, but a limitation in the way iMovie 3.x exports to "Full Quality DV" (what a charade). Here's the knowledgebase reference (at the bottom of the page). I can't believe those rat bastards snuck that in like that!

[havema-1]

Yes, this is a pain with iMovie 3.

Another thing to be aware of is that if you import DV-encoded QT movie with 48 kHz audio, iMovie 3 converts the audio to 32 kHz. On the other hand, if you import a DV stream, then 48 kHz audio is preserved.

Let's all submit a bug report to Apple so maybe they'll fix it. This can't be the right way to do it.

[WiseWeasel]

My bug report for the first issue is already submitted. However, that knowledgebase article made it seem like they are perfectly aware of the limitation they have introduced into iMovie since 2.x.

[GORDYmac]

If you have QT Pro, just open the Video.mov file located in your project's folder and do your export's from QT Player. I had my own issues with iMovie lately, and this seems to be the best way to maintain the quality you're looking for in your exported projects.

[WiseWeasel]

The 'Expert Settings...' option I have described in the first post does the same thing, putting the original video and audio (and something called a volume track with my Canopus ADVC 100 DV bridge) DV streams in a .mov container. This seems to be the easiest method of editing your footage in iMovie and getting the full quality out of it in a .mov container. It was really very low of Apple to downsample the audio like that in a setting named "Full Quality DV", since it would seem to indicate that it's full quality, when it couldn't be further from the truth (well, maybe a little further).