iMovie Tutorial 0007 - Exporting to QuickTime™ Movie or for use with iDVD

Okay, so you have this great project that you've just finished, and you need to bring it into another program, display it on your web site, or turn it in on CD or DVD. To do this, you will need to export your movie. iMovie has several "built-in" configurations that take much of the guesswork out of compressing your video for optimal playback on one of those media types. I often find, however, that the standard choices are not quite what I want or need. This is when the Expert options come into play.

First, we will cover exporting your movie for use with iDVD, Apple's DVD authoring application. This is mind bogglingly easy.

1. Open your project that you wish to export.

2. Go to the FILE menu and choose EXPORT. Pick EXPORT > "for iDVD" from the pull-down menu in the dialog box.

There is no step 3 (to quote Mr. Jobs)

Exporting to QuickTime™ movie

First of all, I want to stress that these are settings that I find comfortable in terms of file size and quality. Your project may have different needs which require you to use different settings. The goal of exporting your movie is to choose the settings which give you the best file size to quality ratio. Experiment, and keep notes of your conclusions for further reference.

1. Open the project that you wish to export.

2. Go to the FILE menu and choose EXPORT. Pick EXPERT from the EXPORT options in the dialog box.

3. Let's assume that you need a simple, fairly small movie that will play back smoothly. Quality is an issue, but smooth playback is more important. Let's also assume that the default settings will not work for your particular needs. In the EXPERT QuickTime Settings dialog, under Image Settings, click the Settings button to open the Compression dialog.

4. Now, you can set the CODEC (Compression) to Sorenson Video, Best quality, 15 fps (frames per second), and key frame every 15 frames. Clicking OK brings up the save dialog.

5. Name the movie, adding the .mov extension, and  the movie begins to export. Depending how long the movie is, this could take awhile (several minutes to conceivably and hour or more).

There are many variations of compression, frame rate and frame size that can dictate the final file size of your movie, so it is best to experiment and get a feel for what works for you and your content.