iMovie '09 & iDVD: The Missing Manual

Chapter 14. From iMovie to QuickTime

For the best and most cinematic viewing experience, play your finished iMovie productions on TV, from a DVD, a tape, or an Apple TV, or at high resolution on a big computer screen. That way, your public gets to see the full-sized picture that your camcorder captured. (iMovie '09 can't play your movie on a tape or export the finished project to a tape for archiving and viewing—but iMovie 6 can. See Chapter 11 for details.)

When you want to distribute your movies electronically, you can convert them into QuickTime files instead. Both Mac and Windows machines can play these files right on the screen with little more than a double-click. Your distribution options for QuickTime files are far greater than for videocassette or DVD, too. You can email a QuickTime file to somebody or post it on the Web for all the world to see (Chapter 13). You can put bigger QuickTime files onto a disk, like a recordable CD, DVD, external hard drive, or an iPod, to transport them. You can export only the audio portion of your movie—or only the video portion.

This chapter covers all of these techniques, step by step.

Understanding QuickTime

A computer displays video by flashing many still images in rapid succession. But if you've ever worked with graphics, you know that color graphics files are data hogs. A full-screen photograph file might occupy 5 or 10 MB of space on your hard drive and take several seconds to open up.

Most computers today are fast enough to open and flash ...