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 "Animation." (Screenshot—opens in new window.) For "Size," I chose "custom" and filled in the dimensions 720 for width, 406 for height. (For 4:3 aspect ratio, choose 640 x 480.) For sound, I kept it at: Integer (Big Endian), 48.000 KHz, Sample size: 16-bit, Channels: Stereo. Please note: These settings might have been available for me because I also have Quicktime Pro installed on my computer. If the "Compression: Animation " option is not available, try "Apple BMP," "Apple Component Video YUV422," "PNG," or "None."
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 it's nice to give your intended audience (fellow fan video fans) a choice.
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 Quicktime." (If making an MP4 file, you will be chosing—of course—"Export to MPEG-4.")
For "Compression," choose Sorenson 3 or H.264. (NOTE: if using MP4, only go with H.264.) Or, ideally, make two videos, one with Sorenson 3, the other with H.264. Sorenson 3 is an older codec (will play on Quicktime 6 and on older computers) but the picture quality isn't as good. H.264 has far superior quality, but not might play well on older computers. Making a version of your video with each of these codecs covers more bases. Your video's viewers can pick which version works best for them.
Keep your aspect ratio (frame dimensions) unchanged if you used Final Cut. 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).
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 (circled in purple in the illustration above).
For broadband download, pick a bitrate (data rate) of about 1500-2600, or even higher. For a dial-up downloadable file, aim for about 350-500 bitrate (will look better when using the H.264 codec).
Tick the "better downscaling" box only if you are going to make the frame dimensions smaller (resizing down). Otherwise, leave it alone.
DivX Encoding: (Tutorial coming soon) The DivX encoder will work in MPEG Streamclip. Mac users get a 150 day free trial of DivX (as a plug-in in MPEG Streamclip or Quicktime Pro).
MP4, H.264, broadband: Export to MP4. Compression: H.264, quality percentage 65-80% or bitrate of 1400 - 2600. Frame size: 720 x 406 (or unscaled). Sound: MPEG-4 AAC, Stereo, 192 Kbps. Two-pass is optional; may give good results. |
AVI, DivX, broadband: Export to AVI. Choose DivX codec. Choose a bitrate of 1400-2600. Sound: MP3, Stereo, 192 Kbps. All other settings should be the same as in the broadband MP4 file. Two-pass is optional; may give good results. |
MP4, H.264, dial-up: MP4, Compression: H.264, quality percentage 45-60% or bitrate of 600 - 900. Frame size: 720 x 406 (or unscaled). Sound: MPEG-4 AAC, Stereo, 128 Kbps. Two-pass is optional; may give good results. |
AVI, DivX, dial-up: AVI, DivX compression. Bitrate of 600 - 900. All other settings should be the same as the broadband H.264 file. Two-pass is optional; may give good results.
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All these settings are just suggestions—a place to get you started. You will probably want to tweak the settings more (increase or decrease sound or picture quality, perhaps). Tinker and experiment until you find out which settings work best for you.
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.
The final result:
Here are some examples of a finished video I made using a process similar to the one described above. The video is more than a little funky, but overall the picture quality looks decent (though certainly not "near DVD" quality!), which is all we're concerned about at this point.
This sample video is a little less than one minute long and includes clips from various Richard Armitage shows. I ran the finished video through a free video cleaner (optional) which smoothes the appearance somewhat.
MP4 with H.264 encoding: Broadband (14.2 MB) Dial-up (4.6 MB) |
AVI with XviD/DivX encoding: Broadband (14 MB, encoded with DivX) Dial-up (5.5 MB) |
Quicktime MOV file with Sorenson 3 encoding: Broadband (18.1 MB) | Dial-up (6.4 MB) Sorenson 3 is a slightly older codec which looks pretty decent at higher bitrates (for broadband), but starts to show its age at lower (dial-up) bitrates. It's not a bad idea to have a copy of your video in the Sorenson 3 codec (in addition to H.264 and/or XviD/DivX). Sorenson 3 plays well on older computers and on PCs with weird software issues. (And for those users who can't or won't install VLC Player or the XviD codec.) |
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Better quality (almost DVD quality) can be achieved with more tweaking and higher settings. You're going to end up doing a lot of "test runs" in MPEG Streamclip, experimenting with different settings of all sorts. It'll take some time. Try to keep notes when you get a particularly good result.
"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.
"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:
As far as I know, there is no affordable RealVideo export feature for Macs running OS 10.4 and later. There is a little plug-in which will run in OS 10.3.9, and I've tried it. Very lovely quality, except for the audio "drifts." Too bad.
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, 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!