Condensing Video
 

Hey, so I decided to start doing a weekly video blog on Youtube but my IMovie software makes everything so large in size. For instance, the video I made was a little less then five minutes, and it was 1 GB. Is there a way I can lower the size of the video without losing quality?

LOL oxymoron much? lower size is inherently lower quality.

320x240 decent size; okay quality
640x480 is good size and decent quality

One GB for 5minutes sounds like raw video, before MPEG4 compression. What's your file format?

i don't know anything about it... it says nothing about the file format, i checked. What do you mean MPEG4 compression? And, yes, the raw video thing sounds very acurate.

An iMovie is still a raw assemblage of media types in a format designed to speed editing. It isn't meant to be space-efficient. Once your iMovie is ready you need to use File->Export. That's where you decide on purpose (iPod, DVD, web, etc.) and quality.

As an example, I just captured 20 seconds of continual movement with an iSight camera. The video alone takes 17MB. After exporting to MPEG4 with default settings it takes 1MB. To QuickTime for web (12fps 320x240 with stereo sound) it becomes ~1/2MB.

yes. forgot I forgot about the codecs, there are many codec choices to help maximize video quality vs. size.

MP4, H264 (Apple uses for itunes movies), DivX, Xvid, Sorensen

What is the extension of the file after you save it? It sounds like an AVI.

Yeah, thanks for the help guys. I just checked Help in the program and figured out for myself actually. And Vanblah, like I said it said nothing about the file format. Thanks again guys.