Video Questions

[Rox240]

Just to start off, I use a mac and I also use iMovie to edit my videos. I save them at the highest quality I can (720) and I've noticed the file sizes are quite large (in my opinion.) I just edited a 20ish minute video and it turned out to be about 1gb! Is that normal? Or does anyone have any tips on how to compress the file sizes of my videos?

Thank you in advance!

 

[JerryBoBerry]

For 720p that is a fairly average size file. You can shrink it if you like by running it through Handbrake. I've seen one filmed at 1080p and 60fps that was 4.5GB for 12 minutes. You could zoom in and count arm hairs in that one. But this is porn, not an epic space adventure, so I don't need that much.

Shrinking the size will reduce quality. Either the resolution or bitrate have to be lowered in order to lower the overall size. Many people just watching it on a computer monitor may not even notice a difference if you lower it, but some that like to watch it on large TV screens may. Some even notice the difference between 720 and 1080 now.

So you'll have to decide if you want to lower the quality or not. Personally a gig for less than 20 minutes is a bit too big for me so I run those through handbrake to lower it down to around 200 to 300 million bytes. Saves on storage that way and doesn't make a bit of difference for me on my monitors.


Edit: more specifically answering your question. 'How to lower the quality IN iMovie." Have you seen this site? It explains how to get to the settings area to lower the quality directly so you don't need Handbrake. The data rate section, restricting the number of 'kbits/sec' should lower the output size. You'll have to play around with it a few times to see what you like. Use a smaller 30 second video clip to process it faster at several different qualities and see if it still looks good.

http://www.reely.com/darren/Guides/iMovie Export Guide/#iMovieHDJump

 

[mynameisbob84]

I've noticed the average size of clips from places like Clips4Sale creep up and up to the point that, purely from a business standpoint, it seems counterproductive. The bigger the file, the fewer files any one customer can fit on their hard drive and thus the fewer they'll buy, I'd have thought.