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Exporting Problems in iMovie

unpopularculture

unpopularculture

Hello all. I own a Canon Vixia HF S20 that shoots fantastic raw footage which always looks great when editing in iMovie. However, I keep running into the same problem: whenever I export a project (always at full 1080p), the blacks always turn out muddy, ugly and completely pixelated; they rarely look like this when editing the raw footage. Does this have to do with iMovie's exporting technology?

Whenever I see footage from the HF S20 online, these problems aren't present, but I also notice that most people are using Final Cut Pro. Is FCP's exporter really that much superior? Will it solve my problems?
 
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It probably has to do with whatever format you're exporting to. The default settings on iMovie are generally optimized for the lowest possible file size, which is probably what's causing your problem. Rather than just exporting, try "Export using QuickTime". That should give you options for higher quality settings, though it will also take a lot longer to export. Then just choose whether you want to save it as an h.264 or MPEG-4 format file (the former is best for uploading to the web), and choose the size of the video from the drop down, and you should get a much higher quality end result.
 
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The reason I asked the question is that camera needs a lot of light to get great images, and if there isn't enough light you'll get noisy images that appear worse in the blacks.
 
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Problem Solved

I chose "Export Using QuickTime" and picked QuickTime Movie (H.264) and ramped up all the audio and video settings. The file sizes are huge, but totally worth it. Thanks for your help!
 
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