Making your first fan video with iMovie
Exporting from iMovie and converting the file for the web:
Now that you've finished your little "test" movie, it's time to export it out of iMovie. Keeping with the philosophy of "Excellent quality in, excellent quality out," we're going to save the video using the highest quality settings possible.
In iMovie, go to "File >> Export." Choose "Full Quality."
Click on the "Share" button and wait for iMovie to convert your video over. That's it. It's that simple. Your finished video will be big (several hundred MB at least) and will have the .dv extension. It can be opened in MPEG Streamclip and converted to a web-ready file.
I used to recommend exporting out of iMovie in the same way as is done in Final Cut, but there can be quality issues (weird "blocky" thing again) and so this is much safer. "Full Quality" looks just fine!
Exporting video out of Final Cut (Pro or Express).
In Final Cut, go to "Export" >> Quicktime Conversion." I chose to save a Quicktime Movie, clicked on the "Options" button. The setting I chose for "Compression" was "None." But I could also choose "Animation" (Screenshot—opens in new window). For "Size," I chose "custom" and filled in the dimensions 854 for width, 480 for height. (For 4:3 aspect ratio, choose 640 x 480.) [If you want to use a larger size, AND/OR if you edited in the PAL format, you can to go to a larger size, like 1024x576 for 16:9 and 768x576 for 4:3.] For sound, I selected PCM, which ended up as Integer, 44 kHz, 16-bit. Channels: Stereo. Please note: These settings might have been available for me because I also have Quicktime Pro (as well as Final Cut) installed on my computer. If the compression option I show here is not available for you, try "Apple BMP," "Apple Component Video YUV422," or "PNG."
An "Uncompressed" movie file of about a minute long is going to be over a GB in size! Prepare yourself for that. If it's "Full Quality" (DV) it'll be perhaps 300-500 MB or so for less than a minute of video footage.
Now it's time to make this video ready for consumption on the Internet. You're going to compress it down in MPEG Streamclip to an easily downloadable size.
Open MPEG Streamclip and open the file you just exported from iMovie. You'll have several options for saving the file: Quicktime, MP4, and AVI. Any of these will do, but to keep it simple we're going to use a format that is increasingly popular for both Mac and PC users.
Making web-ready video in MPEG Streamclip:
There are all kinds of good things you can do with MPEG Streamclip. Open up your uncompressed (or if using iMovie 6, .dv file) in MPEG Streamclip. Go to "File >> Export to MPEG-4."
For "Compression," choose H.264 (circled in light purple).
Check the "Limit Data Rate" box and type in a number. It can be anything from 1200 to 3000+ for broadband. For dial-up, scale the video down to a smaller size (see instructions below) and choose a data rate of between 350 to 750.
For "Sound," keep at MPEG-4 AAC, Stereo, and select a kbps number of 128 or above.
Frame size: Keep your aspect ratio (frame dimensions) "unscaled" if you used Final Cut. (See big green arrow in screenshot above.) iMovie users have will need to go with the frame size that has the proper aspect ratio by it (in parenthesis). If their finished video is supposed to be 16:9 widescreen, select the frame size which says that (or choose 4:3 if their video is supposed to be fullscreen). (You'll see in the screenshot above that I have an HD video with a size of 1280x720. Your video will different size, unless you also made an HD video.)
If you prefer to scale down your video to a smaller size, choose the checkbox "Other" under "Frame size" and select 640x360 for 16:9 widescreen videos, or 640x480 for 4:3 fullscreen videos. If you choose a smaller size, be sure to check the "better downscaling" box (see big red arrow).
Tick the "better downscaling" box only if you are going to make the frame dimensions smaller (resizing down). Otherwise, leave it alone.
To Crop or not?
If your video has any black letterbox lines at the top and bottom, you can remove them in MPEG Streamclip. (Read more about cropping your video.)
Now that all the proper settings have been selected, click the "Make Movie" button and wait for MPEG Streamclip to finish encoding.
"Behind Blue Eyes" ("Robin Hood" fan video) by penelope: Medium broadband (41 MB) MOV (H.254) | Dial-up (15 MB) AVI (DivX). (Made a few months after "Incomplete," and only her fourth completed video, penelope created this masterful video, with the help of some sophisticated iMovie plug-ins!) "Sparkhouse" fan video, by tittletattle: Broadband (52 MB), MP4 H.264 file. (Her first fan video ever in iMovie!) Please Note: This video has a clip with adult themes. (No nudity or profanity, but not appropriate for younger viewers.) "Incomplete" ("North & South" fan video) by penelope: Broadband (91 MB) MP4 (H.264) | Dial-up (20.8 MB) H.264 MP4 file. (By a iMovie newbie AND Mac newbie! Penelope had only been using Macs for a few months when she made this.) "A New Love" ("North & South" fan video) by Elvira: Broadband (66 MB) MP4 (H.264) | Dial-up (15 MB) H.264 MP4 file. (This was probably the 5th or 6th time I did ANYTHING with iMovie.) Warning: All these videos contain spoilers! |
Additional Tutorials:
I just scratch the surface on your export/encoding options! The Foolish Passion fan video forums have several more tutorials for exporting video. Free membership is required to view the tutorials. You're invited to sign up, as we're a friendly bunch with a variety of skill levels, ages, and fandoms.
- Making "shiny" fanvids in Final Cut and iMovie. Smooth out noise and make sharp and gorgeous video, using different encoding software.
- Adding a watermark in iMovie (using iMovie 6 + iMovie 08). It's hard to add a watermark (your signature in the corner of the video—often used to deter clip theft) with iMovie 6, but if you've got iMovie 8, there's a way to do it!
- Barebones guide to the DivX encoder.
- Add a watermark with Avidemux. This has proven very useful for adding a nice-looking watermark in your iMovie videos.
- Web-ready "recipes" for Mac and PC. Includes some instructions on exporting web-ready video straight out of Final Cut or iMovie
- Watermark tutorial thread. Includes a tutorial on making an "embossed" looking watermark in Final Cut (Pro or Express).
File size: What's too big, what's too small?
Everyone is going to have a different idea about what file size is "too big" for a fan video. Now that more and more people are using broadband, the need to make super-small file sizes isn't as desperate. Most fans will wait a few moments (and with broadband, it often is just a few moments) to download an especially high quality video.
It's something you're going to have to decide for yourself, but looking around, I find that it's not outside of reason to have your very high-res, high quality files be 15 MBs or above for every minute of footage. That means that your average three-minute fan video will be 45+ MBs in size. I'm seeing those sizes (and larger) all the time these days. [Update, July 2010: A lot of us are now vidding in HD—meaning Blu-Ray quality. The data rate of HD is usually 4000 or above, so an average HD video is perhaps 80-120 MB. For more info on HD, read this tutorial.]
"Dial-up" standards for files might be anywhere between 3-7 MB per minute of video footage. The rule of thumb I'm trying to adhere to is no more than 20-25 MBs for a full-length fan video, tops. 15 or even 10 MBs total file size is better, but not always possible without sacrificing too much picture and sound clarity.
Other formats: WMV, RealVideo and MPEG:
It appears that the latest version of RealPlayer for Mac has an encoder available. I have yet to test it out. In any case, Real does not seem to be very popular these days, so not many vidders user it.
There are two options for encoding WMV (Windows Media) files on the Mac. One is Flip4Mac, which is expensive ($50 for so-so quality, $100 for decent quality). The other encoder is the versatile and inexpensive VisualHub [now defunct], but I can't get my WMV files to look decent with it. (Alas, the developer of VisualHub has discontinued the program, but others are now developing it.)
I'll admit here to having a prejudice against WMV, for several reasons. Firstly, as mentioned above, the quality simply isn't good enough. What is the whole point of aiming for near-DVD quality when WMV can't deliver that?
Secondly, it's been my experience that most people want to go with the path of least resistence—Windows Media Player comes preinstalled on all PCs, and some people complacently think that they don't need any other player. They'll pass over a gorgeous quality MP4 or XviD AVI file to play a bad quality WMV, just because it's easier. Only if there is no WMV version of a video available will they consider figuring out how to play some other format.
XviD/DivX and H.264 are commonly used on the Internet, so it's not unreasonable to make your fan video in one of these formats. There are many players and other solutions available which make it easy for any computer to play them. Probably one of the best is VLC Player, which will play almost anything and is cross-platform and free.
But (there's always a "but") some computers are very old or suffer from weird software conflicts. For these visitors, the old file format MPEG-1 is a good choice. It'll play on old computers (I was able to open it in Mac OS 9), and therefore is more "backwards compatible" than WMV.
Final Thoughts and Thanks:
Now that you understand better the process you must go through to make fan videos, you can start collecting clips for your first "real" fan video project! Just remember the motto: Start small at first. Continue to do experimentation until you are confident you can produce consistently good results with your finished (web-ready) video.
I want to take the opportunity to thank tittletattle and penelope, fellow Mac vidders from the C19 message board, for their invaluable input. They taught me about some other great ways to approach Mac vidding (let's face it, we're all newbies at this!), and both of them have produced beautiful work.
I also have to put out a huge "THANK YOU!!!" to Sereenie, my video "mentor" over on the GerardButler.net forums. Her videos are absolutely stunning, and she's quite an inspiration. She's a PC user, but the advice she gave me crossed over computer platforms! I don't know if I'll ever be able to make videos which are as sharp or as beautiful as hers (and of course my editing skills are definitely still in the "newbie" category) but thanks to her good advice, the quality of my videos has skyrocketed. This tutorial was launched in part due to her enthusiasm and inspiration. She may not realize it (yet!) but she's going to be partially responsible for influencing many new Mac vidders!