[Jeff Carpenter]

Yeah, you should probably be doing something to every photo. It’s not that much work once you get used to it.

Be aware, though, that even though I do something to every clip, they’re not all over the top fancy moves. If it’s a lively, fun song I might do a lot of extreme effects, but if it’s a slow song with couple photos then a lot of my moves might be something like “grow from 100% to 110%.” So it’s ok if some of your moves are very, very slight. But it helps to have SOMETHING there, at least.

And they don’t all have to move…they just have to do something. Here’s one of my favorites that doesn’t involve moving the photo: Scan your photos at very high resolution. Take a photo that shows someone’s entire body but zoom in so you just see their face. Don’t do any motion moves on it, but fade from that to the full version of the same shot. It’s like you’re cutting from a close up to a long shot and it looks very nice.

[Jeff Carpenter]

Make sure your document is starting out at 300 dpi. If you drop a video still onto that, it should only show up at roughly 3 inches wide. If you make it any larger than that you’ll start to pixelate it.

What I do is put more than one video clip on one cover. I blend them together so they look nice, but I don’t blow them up. I figure it’s better to have 5 nice, tiny pictures than 1 big and pixelated one.

If that’s not the problem then I’d also suggest using some kind of photo paper along with printer settings to match. That can sometimes help.

(When you say everything comes out pixely, do you mean the text you’ve typed or just the video clips? If it’s EVERYTHING then you might have printer issues, but if it’s just the video clip then just try my advice about leaving the image small.)

[Jeff Carpenter]

Those are all good ideas, and by all means, do what you can, but at a certain point people have to understand that if they want ALL of an event that is “x” long, then their video will be “x+standard-length” long.

I try to make highlight videos that are less than 20 minutes long, but sometimes people request so much stuff that it ends up being 40 minutes long. Well, that’s pretty long as far as I’m concerned, but those people love it because that’s what they wanted!

[Jeff Carpenter]

Personally I’m tired of talking about this subject.
====

I don’t mean to drag you back into it, I was just confused as to the meaning of their web site. I’m not trying to advance a particular view…just trying to understand it all!

[Jeff Carpenter]

Walter, I’m a little confused, then, why Apple is saying:

====
You can use your purchased music in applications other than iTunes. For example, you can use it in a movie you make or in a presentation you create.
====

…on their web page. I’m not saying you’re wrong, I’m just at a loss to explain what they mean by this, exactly if what you say is correct.

[Jeff Carpenter]

In case you wanted to see it spelled out in text, I found it:

https://www.apple.com/support/itunes/tutorial/segment102095b.html

It’s the last “Key Point.”

[Jeff Carpenter]

Burn to CD and then import from the CD as a 48 kHz AIFF file. As long as it is for a personal project it’s pefectly ok. I think that you can just use those files in iMovie directly, so clearly they’re ok with that kind of use.

They don’t let you put it in Final Cut because they assume you’re doing something more professional, but as long as you’re not, I don’t see any problem with it.

[Jeff Carpenter]

Ah, that sounds like what I’m talking about, Bryce.

I’m not in front of my Mac either, which explains the incorrect term. Thanks!

[Jeff Carpenter]

Have you checked the “Motion” tab in the viewer for any of your clips? There is an aspect ratio setting in there.

Depending on what you want, -33, 0, or 33 could all be numbers you want. Try changing it to those and see if that changes it to what you want.

[Jeff Carpenter]

[SYSTEM DRIVE]>USERS>[ACCOUNT NAME]>LIBRARY

If you back up that folder, it should contain everything you need. If you want, you can go in and probably find each folder you need, but you can just backup the whole Library to be safe.

The folder [SYSTEM DRIVE]>LIBRARY contains settings that are system-wide, so you may want to back that up too, although things like Safari bookmarks or Address Book names are in the [ACCOUNT NAME] Library. Remember that things like your iTunes and iPhoto playlists are not in that folder. They’re in the other folders in your [ACCOUNT NAME] folder.

If you want to spend $99 for a .Mac account, it comes with a backup utility that stores your files on a server somewhere else. The nice thing about that is that it allows you to select the things you’re talking about from a checklist. Very simple.

https://www.mac.com/1/iTour/tour_backup.html

There are probably other programs you can buy that do this too, although I don’t know any since I just burn backup discs manually.