newbie with format question “Up-Conversion to ProRes 422 1080p24”?

[Shane Ross]

Well, first off, DVDs are SD, so they are best done at 720×480. And second, iMovie doesn’t work with ProRes or DNxHD…those are professional codecs. Nor does it work with Photo JPEG, or Flash, or Windows Media. It works with .dv, which is DV Stream at 720×480, and Apple Intermediate Codec, which can be 960×720 or 1440×1080. It also has an iFRAME codec that works at 960×540…some odd mid-HD size.

To retain quality, while working in iMovie…might be best to convert to DV Stream. .DV. The best option from that list is DV/NTSC.

HOW? No idea…I don’t use iMovie, I just know a few things about it.

Might consider looking at Premiere Pro…it’s $20 a month, and can work with those files WITHOUT converting anything.

Shane
Little Frog Post
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def

[Mark Suszko]

My take on it: these are old, therefore standard def games; you don’t really see much benefit in up-rezzing them, unless your goal is to change their aspect ratio. But to do that, you’d either blow them up too much or end up cutting off the top and/or bottom.

I think your easiest play here is to ask for them in h.264, which is a compact, efficient, and good-looking format for playing the files on a computer, they won’t take up a lot of space on the hard drive… heck, you will be able to store several games on a DVD-R as data files… There are free apps like Mpeg Streamclip or FLV Crunch, both drag and drop easy to use, that can cross-convert that h.264 format to another format if you decide to make a DVD of it.

If you’re on Yosemite OS, your ability to use iDVD or DVDSP is gone; your available authoring options include third party apps like wondershare DVD maker for mac, Roxio Toast Titanium, ( priced between 20 and 100 bucks for used or new) or, trading up from imovie to FCPX (Final Cut Pro 10), for $299, which DOES have a simple “Share to DVD” function I use all the time. Of these choices, I’d suggest trading up to FCPX if you can afford it, as you will gain a lot more power and control over your editing, with a bunch of neat features imovie didn’t have or only offered as canned effects.

Sorry if the solution isn’t easier: Blame Steve Jobs, since one of the last things he did as he was dying was order Apple to turn away from all optical media and actively discourage it, in favor of the at that time under-developed “cloud”. He was right in the long term, but in the short term, Jobs screwed a lot of users who were happy with having a DVD burning capability in their macs and used it every day.

[Ben Kleinman]

Thanks for both responses thus far.

If I went with h.264 could I simply double-click and play that file on my computer to watch the games? Or do I need to convert it first?

And, do you know if I will be able to play it directly from a cloud drive (e.g., google drive, dropbox, amazon cloud, etc.)?

[Mark Suszko]

You’d have to download it from the cloud drive to a local hard drive to play it, but you can play h.264 files with quicktime or quicktime for windows, or windows media player, or the free “swiss army knife” video player, the free app called “VLC”

[Ben Kleinman]

Sorry, one other question. Can I used an external, but local, hard drive (e.g. connected by USB)?

Again, I appreciate the help.

Thanks,
Ben