Reducing File Size From iMovie

[donnie025]

I am trying to reduce the file size from a movie made with iMovie. It turned out to be 64mg so I "shared" and converted it to a QuickTime file reducing the quality from 720p to "large" and still it was 64mg. The actual size of the player when it comes up on the screen gets smaller but not the actual file size. I am sending video auditions to my agent and they can't be greater than a certain size for some production companies for some reason. Like 20mg. Weird but if I can get some help on HOW to reduce a file size, you rock.

[phoenixsan]

look out in the "Reduce video size in Apple OS X" section:

http://www.wikihow.com/Reduce-Video-Size

[simsaladimbamba]

You could also try HandBrake to compress the exported iMovie sequence further.

Btw, "mg" is short for "milligram", a metric unit for weight. "MegayByte" is abbreviated with "MB".

[talmy]

This is always an issue for me as I produce about 3 hours of video a week for classes I teach, and I put the files online so students can download them. Keeping the file size down is important.

The "trick" is to "Export using QuickTime", "Movie to QuickTime Movie" Then in Video Settings you want Compression Type H.264 (you can also seek out x264 which does a bit better job, but it's not installed on you Mac by default). I reduce the frame rate, but that probably won't be an option for you. Either go with all settings "Automatic" and adjust the Quality to control the size (and always use the Multi-Pass), or you can restrict the data rate to control the size directly. You can also control the image size. If you halve the width you cut the size of the video by 4x.

One thing you don't want to do is export and then compress again. Every time you decode/encode the quality falls (and usually dramatically).