I imported all of my videos from a Sony HDR-CX550V camcorder into iMovie '11. I imported the video at the original resolution 1920×1080. I was planning on converting the video into some other codec so I can view it on both a Mac and Windows machine.
Unfortunately, I learned that this video is an ICOD (Apple Intermediate Codec) format wrapped in an MOV and I cannot use Handbrake to convert the video.
So I created a project in iMovie, added one of the videos to it, and exported it to HD 1080p…and the quality was absolutely horrible! For instance, the shadows in the converted video had a red tint! It reminded me of a .GIF animation.
Unfortunately, I no longer have the videos on the camcorder, so I'm stuck with these ICOD files…what are my options? I want to convert them into something Handbrake can handle.
Thanks!
Best Answer
From iMovie, go to Share-> Export Using QuickTime. Set the Export: menu is set to
Movie to MPEG-4. Click the Options... button next to that menu.Set the File Format to MP4
Set the Video Format to H.264
Set the Data Rate to something like 2048
Set the Image Size to 1080
Click OK
Click Save
That should give you a much better-quality video.
Hope this helps!