Can't import more than 500 still frames into iMovie

[pfbg]

Hi!
I'm trying to make a short movie using only still frames from a trip to Patagonia. I have almost 1000 stills.
a) I named them sequentially 001, 002, 003 up to 983.
b) In iMovie Project Properties I set the duration of each still to 0,2 seconds.
c) Yesterday I tried to import them all by dragging them to the project window. d) After hours showing me "less than one minute remaining..." I forced quit iMovie.
e) I then started to import in chunks of 100 images.
f) After importing the 500th still, I tried to import images 501 to 600.
g) Here's the problem: iMovie seemed to import all stills but from that point on (starting from image 501) I have all stills looking like image 501.
h) I tried to import in a small chunk, 50 images, with the same disapointing result. It doesn't matter how many images I import, from now on (500th image) all stills look the same.


I'm wonder if iMovie has some limit for imported stills... Or may I'm doing something wrong?

Plese help.

I'm using iMovie 11 on a 8GB Macbook Pro Retina 15" with OS X 10.8.2.

[macosnoob]

I don't know the iMovie '11 maximum, but you should consider a combination of number of images and size of images when you think about what iMovie can handle. I put 2300 small images (1138x833 pixels) into iMovie '09. iMovie churned for about 15 minutes before it got them loaded, but it did load them. Then iMovie became quite sluggish. I imagine editing in iMovie would have been excruciating slow.

I turned to a smaller sample: 100 images at 1138x833 pixels and the same 100 scaled 400% to 4552x3352. The smaller 100 loaded into iMovie in 30 seconds. The larger ones took 2.5 minutes. How large are yours?

But rather than iMovie, you may want to consider the Pro version of QuickTime 7. It will stitch the images together at lightning speed. The same 2300 small images took less than 10 seconds to join with QT's Open Image Sequence. . . option and then another 15 seconds to save as a QT-default .mov. The larger images took just as little time. iMovie isn't the best tool for this task, at least not for the part that involves joining so many stills into a movie.

[pfbg]

macosnoob, thanks for your time!
My stills are 3456 × 2304 pixels each, ranging from 2 to 4 MB. I totally forgot to think about image size...
Maybe if I scale them to fit HD resolution... They'll be 1620 x 1080 and maybe iMovie will handle all 983 stills. I'll try this and will post the result.
QT 7 Pro is still around? I used to have it but stop using after upgrading to Lion or Mountain Lion. But using QT 7 Pro I wouldn't be able to set different durations for some images as well as a soundtrack. Or would I?

Thanks again.

[macosnoob]

QT7 continues to exist alongside the much-maligned--some would say deservedly maligned--QTX (QT10). You'll probably find the non-Pro QT7 languishing in your Utilities folder under Lion/Mountain Lion. Upgrading to Pro costs US$30.

In QTPro, you can't directly set different durations for selected images. You select one duration that applies to all images. However, you can work around the limitation by repeating an image in the sequence so that, for instance, with every image set to 1 frame/sec, a tripled version of a given image would be on screen for three seconds rather than one. Okay for simple edits; a pain for more complicated projects.

Yes, in QT you can drop in an audio track if you're so inclined. 99 of them if I remember correctly.

If you decide to go the all-iMovie route, my test suggests that scaling down the images before you drop them into iMovie should speed up the process. Whether iMovie will run smoothly with 983 clips is something you'll have to see.

[hayne]

Note, by the way, that there are various 3rd-party utilities specifically designed for creating movies out of a sequence of still images. Using one of these might be easier (when dealing with such large numbers of images)

[pfbg]

hayne,
could you give examples?

[hayne]

One application that I have that can do this easily is LemkeSoft's Graphic Converter:
http://www.lemkesoft.de/en/products/graphic-converter/
You can set up a slide show with preferred timings, transitions, etc and then export the slideshow to a movie via the menu item "Export Slide Show to Movie" (in the File menu).

A command-line tool that I have used is:
http://omino.com/sw/qt_tools/
See the "semaphoreMovie" script that I wrote that uses that tool to combine images into a movie: http://hayne.net/MacDev/Perl/

[pfbg]

hayne,
thank you very much. I'll take a look on that as well as QT 7 Pro. As a sad note after I scaled all images to HD resolution iMovie performed even worst. It could only import 200 images instead of 500...

[chabig]

Quote: Originally Posted by pfbg hayne, could you give examples?

Take a look on the App Store. Search for terms like "time lapse".

[pfbg]

Update:

I found a simple app called Zeitraffer on the AppStore that imported all 983 stills in less than a second. Then I was able to export a .mov setting the fps for the movie. I then imported it into iMovie for tweaking and adding a soundtrack.

I've lost a little image quality because in the end I had to create 2 .MOV files. But the final result was very good ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6olU2hzV9ZY ).

But I should be able to do it only using iMovie, importing directly my 983 high quality frames... still can't understand what happens with iMovie.

[chabig]

Your movie is nice. I agree that iMovie should be able to do it. Here is a tutorial:

http://apple-imovie.wonderhowto.com/...imovie-397591/

[pfbg]

Thanks chabig.
I know how to do it in iMovie... the problem was importing 983 frames since iMovie got stuck around 500 stills!

[chabig]

Sorry. I didn't read your original post thoroughly enough.