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Ghoser777 · Dec 30, 2003, 09:09 AM

I made a friend an iMovie of all his highlights of his football career in high school. Now he would like to send out the movie to colleges in the area to get their attention. He wants to burn them to CDs, not DVDs, otherwise I would just use iDVD and be done with it.

So here's the question - in what format should I export it? I can't really expect all the colleges to have QuickTime, and if a coach doesn't have the right software, I'm betting he's not going to take the time to find the right software. So should I export it to mp4, avi, wma (and how would I do the later?)? The movie is only about 4 minutes long, but I'd like to keep the quality as high as possible. I thought mp4 would be the best, but I can't seem to get the iMovie export setting sto support anything bigger than 320 X 160 (or something small like that).

Thanks,
Matt Fahrenbacher

Uncle Skeleton · Dec 30, 2003, 11:42 AM

The best bet is MPEG-1. Next best is AVI with Cinepak compression (and no audio compression). You can get MPEG-1 for free from ffmpeg, but you'll have to export from iMovie in something ffmpeg can read. Sorenson might be good

Ghoser777 · Dec 30, 2003, 02:26 PM

What program on windows would open up a mpeg? Windows Media Player? I'm just asking because wmp isn't opening up the file I created (neither will Quicktime) but VLC will.

Thanks,
Matt Fahrenbacher

dru · Dec 30, 2003, 05:24 PM

Originally posted by Ghoser777:
What program on windows would open up a mpeg? Windows Media Player? I'm just asking because wmp isn't opening up the file I created (neither will Quicktime) but VLC will.

Thanks,
Matt Fahrenbacher

Windows Media Player will play the mpeg fine. I just made one of these of my niece's birthday for my sister-in-law. She's on Windows.

clarkgoble · Dec 30, 2003, 10:06 PM

Why do you say MPEG-1 rather than MPEG-2?

Uncle Skeleton · Dec 30, 2003, 10:20 PM

Originally posted by Ghoser777:
What program on windows would open up a mpeg? Windows Media Player? I'm just asking because wmp isn't opening up the file I created (neither will Quicktime) but VLC will.

Thanks,
Matt Fahrenbacher

how did you make it?

Why do you say MPEG-1 rather than MPEG-2?

are you serious? what if a coach has a mac? also I have no idea what versions of WMP/Windows (if any) can play mpeg-2 out-of-the-box

Ghoser777 · Jan 2, 2004, 03:48 PM

Originally posted by Uncle Skeleton:
how did you make it?

I used ffmpeg, like you suggested. I'm kind of thinking that the mac os x version of wmp is seriously screwed up, and that's the real trouble.

I'm actually going to put both the quicktime (mov) and mpeg format on the CD just to be safe (file is small enough).

Thanks
Matt Fahrenbacher

ckohler · Jan 2, 2004, 04:45 PM

Windows Media Player for the Mac can *ONLY* play Windows Media files (.asf, .wmv, .wma). It cannot play .mpg files.

The Windows version on the other hand can.