Often, users of iMovie HD want to import (File>Import) sill images which may be still digital photos or computer generated graphics.

I created four test images in Photoshop and imported the images in to iMovie HD (5.0.2). The following four images are frames from a DV movie of the project 'Shared' as Quicktime>Full Quality. Note: the red edges you see were the edges of the test images.

If you want to fill the frame in iMovie HD, use a 720x528 square pixel image.

iMovie HD expects still images to have square pixels.

I created two test images that were 720x528 pixels - one with square pixels and one with rectangular (NTSC 'thin') pixels in Photoshop CS. I included a circle to make it easy to see image distortion. I imported both images into iMovie HD, created and saved ('shared') a full quality DV clip that I brought in to iDVD 5. I 'burned' a disk image of the project and played the project back with Apple's DVD Player application. I used SnapzPro X2 to make the screen grabs shown below.

23 November 2005

Fred Shippey, Electronic Imaging Consulting