In this chapter, you take a look at what you can do with your movies after you complete them: You can prepare them for email, Web, and disc delivery. When your iMovie is edited and ready to share, you can deliver it in two basic ways: by tape (using a video camera) or by file (which can be delivered by email, the Web, or disc such as CD or DVD).
When you’re ready to export your iMovie, simply choose File, Share from iMovie’s menu bar. Then, choose one of six options in the sheet that appears (see Figure 29.1): Email, HomePage, Videocamera, iDVD, QuickTime, or Bluetooth.
Email—. If you want to email a short movie, the Email option will save your movie at an emailable size and, when complete, open a new email message containing the movie attachment.
HomePage—. People with .Mac memberships can use the HomePage option to export a movie directly to their .Mac HomePage. The file is compressed for the Web and stored as a streaming QuickTime, which means the full movie won’t have to download before playback begins.
Videocamera—. When you choose Videocamera, you’ll need to connect a video camera to your computer, as you did when you imported a video clip, and send the finished iMovie back out to Mini-DV or Digital-8 tape. From there, you can watch the finished product by connecting the camera to the television, recording from the camera to a VHS tape using your VCR, or sending the tape off to have several copies duplicated.
iDVD—. When you choose to share to iDVD, the option is basically a preset that generates a high-quality video file that iDVD then converts for use on a DVD disc. It takes up the largest amount of hard-drive space of any of the export options.
Besides exporting to iDVD from the Export dialog box, iMovie’s iDVD pane lets you add “chapters” to your movie, which are then displayed in your iDVD project. We’ll talk about how later in this chapter, in the section “Exporting iMovies to iDVD.”
QuickTime—. When you export to QuickTime, you have a wide range of options based on the intended use of your movies. The one you choose results in a particular kind of file or amount of compression. For example, when you export an iMovie that you want to email to someone, it creates a relatively small file because it must travel over the Internet, and you don’t want the person on the other end to have to wait too long to download the attachment. When you want to burn a CD with iMovie, the CD can hold a much larger file than an email could handle, so the movie quality is much better; however, it’s still not as good as the original iMovie. We’ll take a closer look at some of the QuickTime options in the section “Sharing via QuickTime.”
Bluetooth—. Bluetooth is a technology that enables various devices to exchange information without connection cables if they are in range of each other. If you have a Bluetooth-enabled device, such as another computer or a handheld device, you can export your movie in this way.
When you want to email an iMovie, you export it from iMovie and save it to your hard drive. Then, connect to the Internet and use your email program to attach the iMovie file to an email. If you’ve never emailed an attachment before, keep in mind that uploading the attachment can take a few minutes, depending on whether you’re using a 56K modem or a higher-speed DSL or cable modem connection.
Also keep in mind that it will probably help you to choose a special name for the email version of your iMovie, such as my movie-email.
To send an iMovie via email:
Choose File, Share, and then choose the Email option from the row of icons along the top of the sheet that appears.
Choose the email program you want to send the message and give your movie a name, if different than the name of your iMovie project.
Click Share. iMovie shows the status of your movie as it compresses, as shown in Figure 29.2.
iMovie will create a new message using the program that you chose to send email.
Compose a message and click the appropriate button to send your message.
If you have a .Mac account and have your .Mac membership information set up in the .Mac pane of System preference, you can share your movies online easily.
Simply choose File, Share from the menu and click the HomePage option. After a few minutes of compression, iMovie will upload your movie to your .Mac account and open your default Web browser, where you can customize the page containing the movie, as shown in Figure 29.3.
For more details about setting up a .Mac membership, refer to Chapter 14, “Exploring the .Mac Membership.”
To view an iMovie on television from a tape, the first step is to export the movie to your video camera. Then, you can either connect your video camera to your television or make a VHS tape from your digital tape (Mini-DV or Digital-8).
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When you’re going back out to tape, some of the main considerations are how much time you have left on the tape and how long your iMovie is. You’ll generally want to put your iMovie at the beginning of the videotape so it’s easy to get to.
When you’ve finished your iMovie and are ready to take it to the next level, exporting to a video camera enables you to display it on the television. With a few simple steps, you can make the video ready to share in a one-time event, where you play the video only from the camera. Or, after you have exported the video from iMovie to your video camera, you can then go on to make a tape from there.
Load a blank tape into your video camera and turn it on. (Be sure you aren’t about to record over something you want. Remember to label those tapes!)
Connect your digital video camera to your computer with a FireWire cable.
In iMovie, choose File, Share Movie, and choose Video Camera (see Figure 29.4).
If you haven’t set up your camera, choose the number of seconds to wait while you do that. Also, choose how many seconds of black to show before and after your movie on the tape.
Click Share.
If you want to make VHS copies of the digital tape that you just made, you can connect your video camera to your VCR using standard RCA cabling, where you connect a series of cables to the Video Out and Audio Out jacks of your camera. The video connector is usually indicated by a yellow color. Two cables carry the audio, where each cable carries half a stereo signal (the left audio channel is the white connector; the right audio channel is the red connector) (see Figure 29.5).
Then, connect the cables to the Video In and Audio In jacks of your VCR (see Figure 29.6).
Distributing your iMovies on DVD is the ultimate in digital video. You start by recording your footage digitally, editing it in iMovie, and retaining the digital quality by going directly to DVD. iMovie makes creating DVDs simple by linking up with iDVD.
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Be aware that you can’t write a DVD project to disc with iDVD unless you have access to a Mac with Apple’s SuperDrive, which can read and write both CDs and DVDs.
There is an option for iDVD in the Share sheet, as shown in Figure 29.7. If you want to export your movie to iDVD as a whole, or export only selected clips, simply click the Share button.
Alternatively, you could open the iDVD pane on the right side of the iMovie interface and click the Create iDVD Project button. It takes a moment for your movie to open in iDVD where you can customize the menus and add movies.
Besides maintaining video quality, DVDs offer another benefit to your iMovies: chapters. Adding chapters enables you to segment your video project so that people viewing the completed DVD can skip straight to the part they want to see, just like on a commercial DVD.
Follow these steps to add chapters to an existing iMovie:
Open a finished iMovie project and be sure you are in Timeline view.
Click the iDVD button in the main iMovie window to display the iDVD palette.
In the Timeline Viewer, move the playhead to the point in your movie at which you want to start a new chapter.
A row for the newly created chapter appears in the iDVD palette, where you can type in a Chapter Title, as shown in Figure 29.8.
A small yellow diamond appears in the Timeline Viewer to mark the location of chapters, as shown in Figure 29.9.
You can repeat steps 4 through 6 until you’ve added up to 99 chapters to your iMovie.
When you are finished adding chapters, click the Create iDVD Project button to open your iMovie in iDVD, as shown in Figure 29.10, where you can choose themes to customize the menu that displays your chapters. Before iDVD can be launched, you will be asked to save your project.
By default, iDVD saves your project in the Documents folder of your user account with the file extension .dvdproj. (We talk about customizing your presentation in iDVD in Chapters 30 through 32.)
Sharing options for Email and HomePage also save your project in QuickTime format, but the QuickTime sharing option gives you several additional preset options, including preparing your movie to share on the Web using Web servers other than the .Mac server. You can also choose to export your full-sized movie or a compressed version to fit on a CD-ROM.
The difference between all these QuickTime options is the level of compression, which is directly related to the quality of the picture.
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If none of the QuickTime options are right for your needs, you can choose Expert Settings, which opens a window where you can choose other file formats, such as AVI (a common format for Microsoft Windows users) and AIFF (sound file only).
Putting iMovies on the Web is a bit more involved than putting them on tape or sending them via email, but taking the time to figure out how to do it can make for an ideal way of sharing your iMovies with people who are far away.
There are two ways that iMovie can save your movie for delivery on the Web: as a Web movie or as a streaming Web movie. A Web movie is uploaded to a standard Web server, and a streaming Web movie is uploaded to a streaming Web server.
Here are some terms and concepts that are helpful to consider; entire books and series of books have been written about each item, but just taking a look at each can be helpful later when you start to put more things of your own up on the Internet.
Server—. A server is the name for the computer used as the central storage location for Web pages. When you create a Web page on your computer, you have to upload the files to a server. Then, when people view your Web page, the Internet basically functions as a network connection to the server computer. When people hit your Web page, all they’re really doing is downloading a series of files (text, graphics, HTML, and so on) from this Web server (the same place that you uploaded the files) to their computer.
Standard server (for Web movies)—. This is the most common type of server. When you put your Web page file on the server and a person clicks on the file, it’s downloaded like any other file; then the person double-clicks the file to view it. A standard server is basically any server that doesn’t have QuickTime streaming capability. If you’re not sure what kind of server you have and you don’t know that it’s specifically capable of streaming QuickTime, chances are it’s a standard server.
Streaming server (for streaming Web movies)—. True streaming video is when you can watch a video without downloading the entire file. Streaming video enables you to watch video in real-time, meaning that you establish a connection with a streaming server and watch the video as if it were a miniature television show. True streaming video basically means that you have a smoother, higher-quality experience. Streaming video is usually more expensive and more complicated to set up, but many companies and individuals find that the effort and expense are worth it. In addition to QuickTime, other forms of streaming video that you might recognize include RealMedia and Windows Media. All forms of streaming video require some kind of player application, such as QuickTime, to be present on a person’s computer.
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Keep in mind that even true streaming video is still dependent on how fast your connection is—video can be streamed on typical 56K modems for example, and the streaming version is smoother than a non-streaming version, but the quality is not as good as you would have on a higher-speed connection such as DSL.
You’ll probably want to save your iMovies using the Web Movie option, unless you specifically know you’ll be using the file on an official QuickTime streaming server. In the next section, we’ll take a look at the streaming server as well as investigate an easy-to-use method of streaming video provided by PlayStream.
Choose File, Share; then choose QuickTime.
Choose the Web option in the Compress Movie For pop-up menu (see Figure 29.11).
Click Share and save your iMovie to a location on your hard drive from which you can then upload it to a Web server.
Using an FTP application or a Web page creation program such as Dreamweaver, upload your file to your Web site.
Using a Web page creation tool, make a link to your iMovie, as shown in Figure 29.12. Here’s some sample HTML link code:
Click<A HREF=http://www.psrecords.net/stdwebmovies/fantasia.mov>here</a> to see Fantasia,<p>a cat who thinks she's a kitten
Figure 29.13 shows the Web page with a linked iMovie playing on top.
Even though this isn’t a true streaming server, QuickTime has the capability to play as much of the movie as you’ve downloaded. If you have a fast connection, it can be almost as if it were a streaming clip. (Note, however, that the viewer might have to adjust the QuickTime preferences to play movies automatically to get this effect.)
Did you Know?
When you are sharing your iMovies with people on a Web site, you might want to include instructions for people visiting your Web page to describe how they can actually download the file to their hard drive instead of watching it on the Web page. Instruct Mac users to hold down the Ctrl key on their keyboard, click the movie link, and choose Save Link As or Download Link to Disk option (see Figure 29.14).
Did you Know?
Instruct Windows users to right-click the link and choose the Save Target As option to save the file to disk.
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You might also want to instruct people that, to view your iMovie, they might need to download and install the latest version of QuickTime, which is a free download available from www.apple.com/quicktime/download.
Exporting your iMovie as a streaming Web movie for use on a streaming server is similar to exporting your iMovie as a Web movie for use on a standard server.
Choose File, Share; then choose QuickTime.
Choose the Web Streaming option in the Compress Movies For pop-up menu.
Click the Share button and save your file on your hard drive in a location you can find later to upload to the streaming server. You might want to name the file so that you can easily distinguish it later as a streaming file, something like
my movie-streaming.mov.Use your FTP program or Web page creation and upload tool to upload the iMovie to the streaming server.
As mentioned earlier, setting up a QuickTime file for a streaming server can be more complex and might require some experimentation and research. At the minimum, you must set up a Web account with a host company capable of QuickTime streaming.
You also might want to investigate a company such as PlayStream, whose mission is to make the process of streaming video as easy as possible. PlayStream has special accounts that exist only to host streaming video. So, if you already have a Web page, you can put your video on a PlayStream account and link to it from your current Web page. Or you might simply want the increased quality of streaming video without the typical hassles, so a service such as PlayStream might be a worthy option.
PlayStream is nice because it offers a free 15-day trial, and its accounts enable you to host the common formats of streaming video, including QuickTime video, Real Media, and Windows Media, so you can reach the maximum audience. Preparing your video for the different formats can require downloading or purchasing additional software, but it might be worth it because most people usually have the ability to view video encoded for either the Real Player or Windows Media Player.
For some people, it might actually be easier to try a service such as PlayStream and use full streaming video instead of getting Web creation software. PlayStream enables you to simply use your browser to upload files, and you don’t even need your own Web page—when you upload files, you’re given a link that you can email to people to get them directly to your video.
If you want to try the PlayStream option, you can sign up for a free 15-day trial at www.playstream.com. It’s a way of getting right into putting your iMovie on the Web without spending any money.
Go to www.playstream.com and log in; then click the Content Manager link.
Click the Browse button (as shown in Figure 29.15) to locate the streaming Web movie file you saved earlier to your hard drive.
Click the Upload File button in the Content Manager on the PlayStream Web page to upload the file to your space on PlayStream. A window pops up (see Figure 29.16) that gives you a progress indicator of the upload.
After the file is uploaded, select the text in the Stream Link field and copy the link into memory by choosing Edit, Copy from the menu at the top of the screen.
Paste the link text somewhere you can get it later, such as in an email to yourself or in a text document.
To allow access to the movie, insert the Stream Link text in an email, use it as a link on a Web page, or just paste it right into your Web browser.
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You might want to include in your instructions that to see your iMovie, some people might have to download and install the free QuickTime software from www.apple.com/quicktime/download. Doing so installs a special plug-in file for the person’s Web browser (Internet Explorer/Netscape/AOL) that enables them to view the streaming video file.
If you have a CD burner and want to share your iMovies via CD, you can simply save as a CD-ROM movie, which generates a QuickTime movie file small enough to burn to CD. If a person is on a Mac, she can see the movie without installing special software. Many Windows PCs have QuickTime software installed, but if it’s not on your recipient’s computer, she can download it free from www.apple.com/quicktime/download.
To export an iMovie for CD-ROM:
Choose File, Share; then choose QuickTime.
Choose the CD-ROM option in the Compress Movie For pop-up menu.
Click Share and save your file in a location on your hard drive where you can find it later.
After you’ve exported your movie, you can burn it to disc as you would any other data CD, as described in the section “Burn a Disc” in Chapter 2, “Using the Finder.”
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You can also use third-party CD-burning software (such as Toast) to burn your CD to disc. The process can vary, but typically you will drag your CD-ROM movie file into the program and choose the option to burn a data CD (as opposed to an audio/music CD). Be sure to choose a format that’s compatible with the computer of the person you’re burning it for, such as the Mac OS/PC Hybrid CD option in Toast, which makes the CD-ROM compatible with either Mac or PC.
If you have a Bluetooth-enabled computer, you can export your movie to share with other Bluetooth devices in your vicinity. To do this, choose Share from the File menu and click the Bluetooth option. Then, click the Share button. This will save a version of your file inside a Bluetooth folder inside the project folder for your iMovie. The file can be shared with other Bluetooth devices using Bluetooth File Exchange.
In this chapter, you learned how to take your iMovies and share them in several different ways, including by email, videotape, and CD. Some methods, such as streaming Web video, might require more effort than others, but learning how to put an iMovie on the Web can open up new audiences for your creative works. You literally gain the ability to go worldwide with your iMovies!