COMPRESSING WITHIN IMOVIE 2

The most comfortable entry point into the world of compression is from within the user’s editing software. To compress files within iMovie 2 follow these simple steps.

Once you are happy with your final edit, under File on the top toolbar within iMovie 2 choose Export Movie (Apple E) and then select To Quicktime. A choice of preset settings covering web and CDRom delivery will be offered. Make your choice, click on Export, choose a destination for your compressed file and then click on Save.

Familiarise yourself with the presets by working your way through them. If your project is large do test compressions on a 30 second portion your project. Do this by exiting iMovie and renaming and duplicating the project file. Open the duplicated file and edit this project down to a length of 30 seconds. Use this for your compression tests.

Once you are comfortable with the iMovie presets venture into the expert setting by clicking on Expert under the Format choices.

This is where you get to manipulate the variables to achieve (and hopefully optimize) your compression results.

As a general rule of thumb for the Apple Macintosh platform use the Sorenson video codec for picture compression, the QDesign Music 2 codec for compressing music or the Qualcomm PureVoice codec for compressing voice.

As you are working your way through the Expert settings take note of the way the variables interact to produce a wide range of results.