iMovie '09 and iDVD: The Missing Manual

Chapter 13. Exporting to YouTube and the Web

If you ask Apple, the DVD has had its day in the sun. The format is over 10 years old. Nobody puts movies on DVD anymore. Plastic shiny discs that have to be—ugh—mailed? That’s such an old-fashioned, clumsy, physical way to share video.

The real action is on the Internet, that billion-seat megaplex where unknown independent filmmakers get noticed, and where it doesn’t cost you a penny to distribute your work to a vast, worldwide audience.

It’s all about YouTube, baby. One hundred million videos watched per day. It costs nothing to sign up and post your videos there.

Or put your videos up on your MobileMe account. It costs $100 per year, but man do videos look fantastic on your MobileMe gallery. They’re available at multiple frame sizes to accommodate visitors with Internet connections of different speeds. Your fans can even skim your iMovie ’09 movies using your mouse pointer, just like you can on your Mac.

Or what the heck: Post videos on your own Web site.

This chapter covers all three ways of making your opus viewable on the Web.

Method 1: iMovie to YouTube

By far the easiest way to post your movies on the Internet is to use iMovie ’09’s YouTube command.

YouTube, of course, is the insanely popular video-sharing Web site, filled to the brim with hundreds of millions of funny home videos, TV excerpts, amateur short films, memorable bloopers—and now your iMovie projects. Once you’ve posted your iMovie there, other people can find it by Web address, ...