Screen recordings poor quality import on iMovie

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Level 1

4 points

Screen recordings poor quality import on iMovie

I've been trying to edit some screen recordings I have taken on my Macbook on iMovie. Yet when I import the screen recordings into iMovie the quality and resolution is worse and all fuzzy. If I just open the screen recordings through quick-player the quality is perfect, exactly how it was recorded. But as soon as it's imported into iMovie it loses that quality. Does anyone know why this is or how to fix it? It would be greatly appreciated.

The first photo is the one played through quick player. The other has been exported through iMovie at 4k resolution but still is blurry. It loses quality as soon as its imported into iMovie. It doesn't look too bad on here but when its a whole screen and you want the best quality, it is very annoying.

MacBook Air (M1, 2020)

Posted on Jun 15, 2023 8:30 AM

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Answer 1

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Rich839

Level 8

47,676 points

Jun 15, 2023 2:29 PM in response to conorgrady

A screen recording is a .mov file. .Mov files have lots of different codecs in them. iMovie is more sensitive to slight differences in codecs than QuickTimePlayer.

Try converting the .mov format screen recordings to Mp4/AAC with the free download, Handbrake. Import the converted movies into iMovie and see if the issue is cured.

You can get Handbrake here:

https://handbrake.fr/

A simple way to do it is to open Handbrake and do a File/Open Source. Navigate to your video and choose it as the source from the resulting screen. Then do File/Start Encoding. Wait a couple of minutes for the conversion to

complete. Then save and import the converted clip into iMovie.

-- Rich

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Answer 2

conorgrady Author

Level 1

4 points

Jun 16, 2023 4:50 AM in response to Rich839

Oh! Thank you. That’s very helpful. I did try that and unfortunately for me my screen recordings were so large that it would take hours to convert it so I’ve had to leave it. Thanks for the help though

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Answer 3

Rich839

Level 8

47,676 points

Jun 16, 2023 7:40 AM in response to conorgrady

Happy to help.

I wonder if the lower quality carries over to the video that is exported from the iMovie project. You might try it by splitting and copying a small segment from the timeline and pasting it into a new project. Then export and see if the quality is satisfactory.

-- Rich

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Screen recordings poor quality import on iMovie

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