Workflow for NEX-5 movies on Mac

I have little experience with processing video.

I played with NEX-5 and D7000 files recently and I'm disappointed with what I managed to get from NEX-5 footage.

My workflow was:

1) shot with AVCHD 1080 setting,

2) imported to iMovie 11 with analyze for stabilization option on,

3) exported using Share -> Export Movie -> 1080p

Resulting video has ugly compression artifacts, sometimes shaky and sometimes wobbles.

Looks much worse than unedited clips played with vlc.

Is something wrong with what I did or I expected too much?

Have you tried turning off stabilization?

How does iMovie capture the footage? Which codec?

AIC if I'm not mistaken.

I agree with you then drew must be the stability function going bonkers.

You may also want to upgrade to the latest iMovie.

Jonny, is that a first?

I've tried the image stabilization in iMovie twice and have given up. It's terrible for underwater footage. Introduces weird out of focus segments.

Jonny, is that a first?

Not at all Drew your are a lot smarter than me! Although that wouldn't be hard