[Treebeard]

I've been fiddling with iMovie for a little now. I don't have a DV camera (yet... ), so I've been loading up photos and setting them to music, and sampling movie quotes. Fun stuff.

So I was getting close to being done on one of them...well, about half I guess. Anyway, I decided to see what it was like to rip one to fullframe QT. Granted I was dog tired, but I'm pretty sure that when I selected this option, the compression options greyed out. Strange, I thought. But I went ahead and ripped the movie. Five minutes later, my first QT movie was waiting on my desktop. (It didn't work like I wanted 'cause I didn't choose the right aspect ratio so my movie was squished.)

But the kicker comes when I went to go check the size of the file. 536 MB!!!! Holy shiznats! I couldn't believe it. First of all, the movie was only a dozen or so pictures, one song, and a few transitions. And it was only 2:30 long, with black screen after 1:30. And it only took 5 minutes to rip on a 400 MHz iMac. But I checked everything, and it was indeed a half a gig. I even deleted it and my hard drive space indeed shot up from 4.5 to 5 gigs available.

Is this normal? (Can't be, can it?) What did I do wrong? Please tell me I did something wrong. I don't wan all this work to be for nothing. I was planning on making a habit out of creating slide show videos (until I get my DV camera for a Xmas present ). But I can't keep ripping 500 MB QT movies!



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Hoom hom hmmmmmmmmmmm...

[jcarr]

It sounds like you exported a DV file. Check the info panel and see what format the Video track is. DV is just over one GB for five minutes of video. A one-hour miniDV tape holds about 13GB of video.

I don't have iMovie in front of me, but there should be a means to export your iMovie as "Web (Small)," "Web (Large)," "CD-ROM," and "Advanced." The first three are presets for beginner users, and the advanced panel gives you all of the QuickTime export options (audio/video codecs, frame-rate, etc.).

You should also bear in mind that the more you compress a movie, the longer it takes. Check the iMovie web page and the iMovie help for more info.

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I'm cookoo for Cocoa Apps!

[C-Eye]

One second of uncompressed, full-size, full-speed (30 fps), 24-bit video is around 27 MB

If you're going to post movies on the web I suggest 320 x 240 (or smaller) at 15-30fps with Sorenson video compression.

If you've got QuickTime Pro, play around with the Export settings to try to get the best quality at the smallest file size. Trial and error is the best way to find the right settings for your clip, as different codecs work better with different kinds of audio and video.

For more info try - http://www.apple.com/quicktime/products/tutorials/


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[Treebeard]

Hmm. DV eh? That makes sense. (Is the 13 GB thing why the first iMac DV SE (which I have) had a 13 GB hard drive? Probably not, as you'd have to erase everything else on the drive, including the system. I can see the advertising pitch now: "With a hard drive large enough to hold an hour of uncompressed video!...kind of...but not really..." )

Thanks for the link to the tutorials! Apple needs to promote that stuff. I've recently found shedloads of useful info on Apple's site from good people like you telling me where to go. Places not immediately accessible or obvious from the structure of the site. Apple needs to work on that. Very helpful once you find them though. I read through all the tutorials and I'm instantly smarter. I was blind, and now am merely visually impaired!

...Or at least you'd think that after watching my iMovies. I'm guessing it's easier to do what I'm doing in QT Pro, rather than iMovie. More control, etc. I'll play with it tonight.

I'm sure that tomorrow I'll post about how I screwed something up. <sigh> Toodles! and thanks again.



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Hoom hom hmmmmmmmmmmm...