I have about 50 TIFFs that I want to import into iMovie. Most of them are 130Mb-150Mb images and a few are around 300Mb. In total it's almost 6GB of images. Most are scans of slides, scanned at 4000 ppi.
Does iMovie resize these images when you import them? Or should I resize them before importing? If best to resize first, what file size, or resolution, would be best?
iMac (2017 – 2020)
Martinez,
Try importing a couple of photos into the iMovie timeline at full size. Then export the project and see if it works to your satisfaction. If it works you are good to go. If it doesn’t work, then you can do resizing.
—Rich
I appreciate your replies and, yes, I will experiment with importing a few images to see how it goes.
There are at least two parts to my interest (or concern, depending one's viewpoint) -
I am not aware of any file size limitation for photos in iMovie. No matter what the file size of the media the iMovie app itself works with medium res thumbnails for editing.
As for the size of the iMovie library, yes media imported into it will increase the library size by the size of the media. However, most people that work a lot with movies use an external drive to store the iMovie library. The drive should be formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled) or APFS. If you don't do a lot of video work the library file size likely would be insignificant.
-- Rich
OK, so I did two tests. First, imported 6 TIFFs of about 120 MB file size. Second, using a fresh iMovie library, imported all 46 TIFFS, file sizes ranging from 5.1 MB to 307.7 MB, averaging 120-130 MB.
In both cases, iMovie appeared to import the images but marked them all with a red line, indicating "Rejected" status. I have not found any definitive answer about what Rejected status means. iMovie is supposed to support TIFFs. So my only guess is the files were too big for iMovie's comfort.
I wasn't going to take any chances with the project I needed to do, so I converted all the images to JPEG averaging about 15 MB per image (quality 12). They imported just fine, no problems, and I just completed the project without any issues. Output quality is excellent.
Hi,
You don't need to resize. Mac iMovie will do what's necessary to render the photos into an Mp4 or .mov video.
-- Rich
...like lower the resolution - a lot.
Importing TIFFs into iMovie ... file size question
